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MONEY TO BURN 




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J 


MONEY TO BURN 


An Adventure Story 


BY 

Reginald Wright Kauffman 



CHELSEA HOUSE 
79 Seventh Avenue New York City 







Copyright, 1924 
By CHELSEA HOUSE 


Money to Burn 
* m 

w> •* vy 

») i> 

* * 



(Printed in the United States of America) 


All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign 
languages, including the Scandinavian. 


JUN-3’24 




u 


C1A793496 

n a .© 




To 

Charles Keene Hammitt 

Dear Governor : 

Like most men of affairs, you pre¬ 
fer your books to be after the manner of this 
one—that’s my belief, anyway. On a train by 
day, or abed by night, you will read “Money to 
Burn” and immediately forget it—which is as 
it should be, for then you can profitably reread 
it a year hence—but I’m certain it will entertain 
you while you are reading it. If it gives you 
the realization of good fights on strange islands 
in tropic seas, if it stirs you with the sense of 
its hairbreadth escapes, if its mystery “keeps 
you guessing” and inveigles you past your proper 
railroad station, or runs up the house electric- 
light bill by holding you tight until morning, 
then it is the sort of book that I have planned 
it to be. I am betting that it will accomplish 
such feats, and so I am dedicating it to you. 

Your affectionate 

R. W. K. 

Geneva, Switzerland, 

Dec. 7 (O. S.), 1923. 



























































































. 



















































































CONTENTS 


CHAPTER • PAGE 

I. Queer Streets.H 

II. “Cross-eyed” Johnson. 18 

III. Deadly Weapons.30 

IY. The Beach Comber. 31 

Y. A Shadow at a Door.63 

VI. In the Dark.76 

VII. Flying Steel.93 

VIII. A Fighting Chance. 107 

IX. The Hunchback’s Eyes. 125 

X. Two Million Dollars. 132 

XI. Footsteps. 1^ 

XII. Followed! .153 

XIII. The Fortune. 172 

XIV. Another Prisoner. 181 

XV. The Wild Cat.192 

XVI. Ready !.203 


















CONTENTS 


CHAPTEtt PAGE 

XVII. Luis’ Machete ......... 210 

XVIII. Rejected Sacrifice. 219 

XIX. The Vagabond. 227 

XX. Double-crossed. 236 

XXI. The Treasury Notes. 246 

XXII. Counterfeit. 261 

XXIII. Under the Hoofs. 271 

XXIV. Flame. 282 

XXV. The Buenos Aires Woman .... 293 

XXVI. Guilty Uncle Sam. 310 











MONEY TO BURN 

CHAPTER I 

QUEER STREETS 

HY night, the most silent spots in all the five 
boroughs of Greater New York are those places 
which are most crowded by day. When evening 
has fallen, the money market’s gold-crammed canons, 
lately echoing to the hoarse cries of the greedy, 
are deserted by all except watchmen in ambush, 
sedulously concealed. The warehouse district that, 
since morning, has resounded with the clamor of 
drays and the shouts of drivers, is changed to paths 
of druids’ graveyards whose tombs are towers. The 
outstretched water front, from Audubon Park on the 
Hudson, around the Battery, and up through the East 
River and the Harlem to McComb’s Dam Bridge— 
those suntime scenes of an immense activity broad¬ 
cast to the world’s remotest corners—become, with 
darkness, leagues of desert—just so much solemn 
stillness and so many mute miles; nor is there any 


12 


MONEY TO BURN 


rod throughout that lonely course more lonely than 
the streets that bound Atlantic Basin on the Brook¬ 
lyn side and look across Buttermilk Channel—now 
a channel of ink—to Fort Columbus and Castle Wil¬ 
liam beyond it on what was once the Governor’s Isle. 

Few lights there, yet plenty of shadows. Scarce 
anybody visible, yet the sense of many lives skulking 
near by, which would add to civilization’s security 
by remaining invisible and torpid forever. 

When young Stone turned out of Conover Street, 
he seemed on the edge of a city killed by the ex¬ 
plosion of some gigantic gas shell. After he had 
walked a hundred yards, he began to feel that 
stealthy beasts were creeping in to feed upon the 
dead. 

“Where you goin’?” 

He came up short before a deep doorway from 
the comparative security of which two policemen 
peered out at him. He could distinguish their caps 
and nothing more; he understood that the law’s 
officers are safer in pairs when they keep their 
nocturnal vigils in such quarters. 

“I’m out for a walk,” said Dan. 


QUEER STREETS 13 

It was a natural excursion for him. He worked 
hard all day over his books at the medical school, 
or over such public-ward patients as he was per¬ 
mitted to attend in the hospital; by evening he 
wanted fresh air, and this night he had sought it at 
the waterside. He had to study so intently that 
there was small opportunity for the cultivation of 
friendship, and so he walked alone. He liked the 
smell of tar and the neighborhood of ships as only 
an inlander can, and so—though this particular spot 
was new to him—he often explored the wharves. 
Nevertheless, as he gave those policemen his entirely 
veracious explanation, he realized that it could not 
sound entirely convincing to its auditors. 

It wasn’t. 

“Let’s have a look at you.” 

A flash lamp shot its rays from the policeman’s 
fist to the wanderer’s face. 

The face of an enthusiast. Blue eyes that smiled, 
but that, even when smiling, could hint of zealous 
faiths and determined defense of them. A mouth 
that smiled also and smiled like the eyes. Fresh 
complexion—frank expression—light hair that 


14 


MONEY TO BURN 


fought its way toward freedom under a soft hat. 
Impossible to suspect such a chap of evil intent 
here, yet equally impossible to consider such a chap 
safe in such a district. 

“Well, this here’s no place for a quiet stroll,” 
said the policeman. 

“The quiet’s desavin’, me boy,” his companion 
added. 

“I can take care of myself,” said Stone. 

The second policeman grunted. “The East River’s 
full o’ lads that thought the same. Run along up¬ 
town wid yez, or somebody’ll be goin’ fishin’ for yez 
in the mornin’.” 

Dan made some pretense at obedience, but he soon 
turned back again and resumed his walk by the 
water. It was full of motionless ships, their masts 
and funnels dimly visible—ships that had come in 
yesterday with cargoes of furs and laces, of sugar 
and coffee, spices and cocoa from distant ports, ships 
that would sail to distant ports to-morrow with 
American chemicals and copper, medicines and ma¬ 
chinery, coal and oil and hardware. 

For the next fifteen minutes he met nobody. 


QUEER STREETS 


IS 


Ihen, up a narrow street to his left, a door opened 
and closed again. There had been a faint glow and 
a howl. A whining dog limped toward Stone and, 
with that canine instinct which recognizes dog lov¬ 
ers at the first encounter, nestled against his already 
pausing feet. 

Dan bent to stroke the cur. It whimpered. 

“Hurt?” asked Stone. 

He felt the animal. One of its forelegs was 
broken. 

There was a corner lamp some distance forward. 
He lifted the dog and bore it thither. A brutal kick 
had probably done the damage. Dan read that in 
the meek eyes turned up to his. He found a bit of 
wood, relic of some box dropped and broken 
by a van, and whittling the stick and ripping his 
handkerchief, he improvised a splint. 

The dog held quiet with understanding patience. 
When the operation was complete, Stone felt a 
damp muzzle kissing his hand. 

“If that was your home,” said Dan, “I think I’ll 
take you back there. Perhaps the sight of what 


16 MONEY TO BURN 

they’ve done will make it safer for you than out¬ 
side.” 

Carefully carrying his bundle, he made his way 
hack to the point whence, he thought, the glow had 
issued. It was an apparently vacant warehouse, 
but Stone knocked at the smaller of its doors. 

No answer. p 

He couldn’t well take his charge home with him. 
His third-rate boarding house opened to much that 
he disapproved of, but the angular landlady set her 
face sternly—and it was a flint face—against dogs. 
She owned a cat, which was her sole comfort, and 
one of the hundred hardships of her lodgers. Noth¬ 
ing to be done in that respect. Moreover, Stone was 
the sort of person who, the more impulsively he has 
embarked upon an enterprise, the more deliberately 
and determinedly he persists in it. 

He knocked again. 

Still no answer. 

Well, he was going through with this thing. If 
the dog had chosen to decamp, that would be an¬ 
other matter. There was a good deal to be said 
against returning him to the scene of his injury; 


QUEER STREETS 


17 


but there was more to be said against turning an 
injured cur loose to the mercies of street urchins 
such as must, by day, infest a neighborhood like 
this. Dan wished the animal would run away; the 
animal lay quiet in his arms, so he knocked a third 
time. 

Now louder. And now a response. 

The echoes of his knuckle blows rolled up the 
dark and empty street. They caromed from the 
black walls of one side to the black walls farther 
along on the other, and, as they lessened with dis¬ 
tance, there came a shuffling step from behind that 
portal before which the medical student was stand¬ 
ing—a shuffling step first; and then a whispered and 
hesitant, but entirely audible, voice demanded: 


“Who’s there?” 


CHAPTER n 

“cross-eyed” JOHNSON 

MOMENT before Stone had been wishing that 



** the dog would decamp and relieve him of his 
self-imposed duty. The dog fled now, yet too late to 
save its preserver from the necessity of going for¬ 
ward. 

At sound of that low voice behind the door, Dan s 
little patient jumped out of its physician’s arms and 
scuttled, on three legs, but with significant speed, 
up the thoroughfare, where darkness instantly en¬ 
gulfed it. In that canine mind, any one of the 
street’s thousand dangers was evidently preferable 
to another encounter with the man who had just 
spoken. For Stone, pursuit w as obviously useless- 
There was no overtaking the fugitive; yet so af¬ 
fected w as he by its determination to escape that he 
poised upon the edge of giving chase. He was 
ready to make that enterprise an excuse for his own 
departure when a bolt was shot back and the door 
opened. 


“CROSS-EYED” JOHNSON 


19 


No retreat now. Dan stood his ground. 

At first, scarcely anything was to he seen there. 
A bullet-shaped head—a head like a modern 
elongated bullet stood on end, with wide ears flank¬ 
ing it, or like those conical spikes, balanced by steel 
wings, which airmen dropped in the later raids of 
the World War. What illumination was vouchsafed 
came from back of this man who now confronted 
him. 

“I ast you who you was.” 

Stone rejoiced that the dog had escaped; anyhow, 
dogs knew best where their comparative safety lay. 
The tone of this inquisitor was thick. His breath 
was heavy with bad liquor. 

Said Dan: “A pup ran out of here a few minutes 
ago. Somebody kicked it-” 

The fellow in the doorway swayed. “Well, it was 
my daw^*, This is a free country—or used to be. 
I guess I got a right to kick my own dawg, ain’t I?” 

“Its leg’s broken,” Stone explained. His anger— 
always quick to rise against cruelty—he did his 
best to put down. “I set the leg. I was bringing 
him back to you.” 


20 


MONEY TO BURN 


Whether protest was not entirely absent from 
that reply and was felt and feared by the dog 
owner, or whether the man really experienced some 
remorse at learning the extent of the injuries he 
had inflicted, it was difficult to say. In either 
event, he suffered a sudden and palpable change of 
heart. His tone softened. 

“Leg broken? I’m sorry. Where is he?” 

“As soon as he heard you coming he beat it.” 

The bullet-headed man hesitated: “You ain’t an 
agent of that association for cruelty to animals?” 

“I’m not.” 

“Well then, don’t worry about that there dawg. 
I know him, an’ he knows me. See? He knows 
my little ways don’t mean nothin’, an’ he’ll be back 
when his bread basket’s empty. I am sort o’ quick¬ 
tempered sometimes, but I get right over it. I’m 
much obliged to you for settin’ that leg o’ his. Come 
on in.” 

There was absolutely no reason in the world 
why such an invitation should be accepted by a 
hard-working, sober-living medical student whose 
sole ambition lay strictly within the limits of his 


“CROSS-EYED” JOHNSON 


21 


chosen profession and whose scarcely indulged hobby 
was—of all things conceivable—the study of that 
Spanish-American church architecture no true ex¬ 
ample of which he had ever seen. Dan knew that 
this neighborhood was a precarious one. He knew 
that he faced a man subject to a form of brutality 
that Stone, for his part, always found especially re¬ 
pellent. Nevertheless, he was that kind of young 
American who finds a compelling reason for any 
course in the very fact that there is no reason ap¬ 
parent. 

“Thanks,” he said, “I will come in for a minute. 
I’ve been walking a good way, and Fm tired.” 

He was curious, too. He stepped inside. The 
other man bolted the door. 

“If you’re done up,” he croaked, “I can give you 
a drop of somethin’.” 

They now stood under a dreary hanging lamp. 
Dan could see that his host was burly, flushed, and 
watery eyed; the host, on the other hand, studied 
Stone’s face and evidently found it as reassuring 
as the policemen had done. 

“It’s the real stuff,” he continued with a waver- 


22 


MONEY TO BURN 


ing smile that gave added proof, if added proof were 
required, of the efficacy of his own liquor. ‘ Just 
got it in from Rum Row out there, an’ I’m sellin’ it 
cheaper’n any other bar in N’York.” 

Dan shook his tow-colored head. Only that aft¬ 
ernoon he had been helping, in hospital, to treat 
the case of a longshoreman who had succumbed to 
wood-alcohol poisoning through use of some “real 
stuff.” However, since Stone seemed to have stum¬ 
bled upon one of the many water-front dives that 
cater to the thirst of wharf workers and sailors 
ashore, no good could come from rousing antag¬ 
onism by casting suspicion on the wares thus of¬ 
fered; so he said only: 

“No thanks. I’m off the stuff. But I don’t mind 
taking a cigar.” 

The dealer led the way down a shadowy hall 
and into a little room that must once have been 
the outer office of some legitimate business con¬ 
cern. What had been the cashier’s cage was now 
lengthened and, relieved of its wire mesh, made 
a quite practical bar with an impressively labeled 
array of bottles on the shelves behind it. There 


“CROSS-EYED” JOHNSON 


23 


were two or three tables in the room, but only one 
of these was occupied. At it sat three men. Two 
of these were engaged in a loud and muddled 
controversy. It was postponed at Dan’s entrance, 
hut, after a glance in his direction, its participants 
paid him no further compliment of attention. He 
took a chair near them. 

“I’ll get you that smoke,” said the dive manager, 
“an’ you’ll find it A 1.” He shuffled behind the 
bar. 

A member of the trio at the neighboring table 
was asking a companion: “When do you sail?” 

Stone heard the answer. “Two weeks from last 
Wednesday.” 

The barkeeper returned, bringing, not a box but a 
handful of cigars that were as dark as the night 
outside. 

“Try one of these here,” he said. “Real Cuban, 
an’ never paid a cent of duty, neither. That’s why 
I can afford to sell ’em at fifteen cents per.” 

A glance told Dan that there was no choice 
among the handful. He selected at random, and 
while the dive manager retreated behind the desk. 


24 


MONEY TO BURN 


there polishing glasses with a dirty towel and occa¬ 
sionally filling and emptying one for his own 
uses, he lighted the weed. 

Awful stuff. Dan coughed over it. He began to 
cast about for some pretense whereby, without giv¬ 
ing offense, he might escape before this alleged 
tobacco choked him. 

“When’d you say you sailed, Mr. Johnson?” 

The customer that had inquired, a moment since, 
about that date of sailing had drunkenly repeated 
the question. Idly Dan looked again at his neigh¬ 
bors. 

The fellow to whom the queries were addressed 
was of just the type that would have been ex¬ 
pected to frequent this place. He had a broad, 
weather-beaten face, and a bad cast in one eye. By 
the way in which he wore his clothes it was clear 
that they were the shore clothes of a sailor; and 
by the awkward movement of his roughened fist as 
he raised his glass, it was equally clear that he had 
raised it quite often enough this evening. 

“I told you once. We’re scheduled to get away 
a fortnight from last Wednesday.” He pronounced 


“CROSS-EYED” JOHNSON 


25 


the “sch” of “scheduled” as if it were “sh” only, 
and he spoke with a rising inflection. 

Dan hit off an inch from the less dangerous end 
of his cigar and dropped that inch inconspicuously 
under his table. There was, he reflected, something 
queer about the questioner and about the silent man 
of the party. The latter seemed to be the question¬ 
er’s particular friend. They somehow appeared to 
have made the acquaintance of the man called 
Johnson recently, and the acquaintance seemed to 
have a common taste for liquor as its foundation. 

Well, that was not unusual, and the manager 
of this place gave no hint of sharing Stone’s feel¬ 
ings about Johnson’s table mates, though, to be 
sure, the manager was fonder of his stock than 
he ought to be, and perhaps this dulled the fine edge 
of that caution which is requisite to succeed in such 
a trade. What, anyhow, roused Dan’s doubts? 

Their subjects were unshaven men in suits that 
had seen hard usage. Both were muscular and both 
uncouth. They ought to belong here—and yet they 
didn’t. They were not seafaring men; they were 
not longshoremen. Stone could bring to mind no 


26 


MONEY TO BURN 


calling indigenous to this section of the city which 
they gave token of pursuing. They lolled in their 
chairs as if they had drunk as much as their cross¬ 
eyed companion, hut, even as Dan was seeking to 
appraise them, he saw the silent fellow quietly 
lower his glass beneath their table edge and let quite 
half the contents trickle to the rusty carpet. 

“Have ’nother drink,” the inquisitive stranger 
urged his sailor guest. 

Johnson laughed in a silly manner. A hiccup 
interrupted his laughter. “Had ’bout ’nough,” he 
said. 

“Not near. None of us have. Come on an’ 

liquor up.” 

Johnson looked at the tempter out of his one 
good eye. It was rather glassy, but Dan saw in 
it, or thought he saw, a struggling mistrust. The 
generous person was in the act of summoning the 
barkeeper; he raised a beckoning hand. Across 
the table Johnson pulled it down. 

“Don’ want ’nother drop.” 

The man who had not spoken nudged his neigh- 


“CROSS-EYED” JOHNSON 


27 


bor. That one clasped Johnson’s restraining fingers 
with a vast good fellowship. 

“Say,” he wheedled, “why won’t you tell us what 
the old tub’s carryin’?” 

“If blue-nosed Goldthwaite heard you speak dis¬ 
respectful of the Hawk/* said Johnson, “he’d throw 
you—throw you across that bar there.” 

“Well, anyway, what’s he goin’ to have aboard of 
her, matey?” 

There was a moment’s pause, during which it 
could be seen the sailor was making desperate en¬ 
deavor to gather his wits together. Then, as if re¬ 
peating a lesson learned by heart, he growled: 

“Condensed milk for the West Indies. I said so 
before, an’ I say it again.” 

This must be the topic over which they had 
been wrangling when Dan entered. 

“Milk nothin’,” mocked the inquisitor. 

Johnson sat back in his chair. “Do you mean 
I’m a liar?” 

The man who had hitherto been silent spoke 
now. He spoke hurriedly and soothingly. “Course 
he don’t. Come on an’ have li’l’ drink.” 


28 


MONEY TO BURN 


“Course he does ” Johnson stubbornly persisted. 
Then rage flamed. “What business of you chaps 
is it what we carry? Eh, what? I don’t like yer. 
I don’t like yer looks, an’ I’ve ’alf a mind-” 

He made it a whole mind then and there. He 
threw his empty glass in the face opposite him, 
leaped up, overset the table, and then jumped it 
with a knife raised in his right fist. 

Everybody was afoot. The dive manager hurdled 
his bar. Stone darted forward. The cautious man 
called: 

“Don’t hurt him, Tom!” 

They were all three too late. The threatened cus¬ 
tomer picked up his chair and brought it down upon 
Johnson’s head—brought Johnson down, too, down 
to the floor. 

“You fool!” yelled the cautious man. “You 
fool!” 

He shot across the room and up the hall. His 
friend was at his heels. Before any of the three 
who were left behind could move to stop retreat, 
the outer door was unbolted. It opened; it closed. 
The fight had been successful. 



“CROSS-EYED” JOHNSON 


29 


“Prohibition-enforcement agents?” asked Stone 
as he bent above the supine Johnson. “After evi¬ 
dence?” 

The violator of the eighteenth amendment mopped 
his low brow. “They wouldn’t never have made 
this kind of trouble if they was,” he said. “They’d 
have just pinched me right off.” 

Johnson opened his crossed eye. “Am I much 
hurt?” 

A quick examination brought Dan’s negative ver¬ 
dict. “But you’re slated for a few days in hos¬ 
pital,” he said. 

“I don’t mind that.” Johnson gave a glare at the 
doorway through which his recent enemies had 
made good their escape. “I only wish I’d got my 
knife into one of ’em. They didn’t learn anything 
from me, eh?” That opened eye almost disappeared 
under the bridge of his nose. “Well, my lad, don’t 
you go a-thinkin’ things. The reason they didn't 
get anything out o’ me was because there ain’t 
nothin’ to be got—that’s why!” 


CHAPTER III 
deadly weapons 

A fter squeamish days of infernal weather, the 
British tramp steamer Hawk — nine hundred 
tons, Captain Goldthwaite, New York to West Indian 
ports—limped across an unruffled sea, blue and 
transparent. There, where the waters of the At¬ 
lantic and the Caribbean meet, morning had dawned 
like the unfolding of a pale-pink rose. Ear away 
off the old tub’s starboard quarter, a silver-gray blot 
against the glittering azure of the sky increased in 
size; gradually it seemed to descend to the world’s 
rim until it detached itself from the heavens; Mount 

Diablo of Santo Domingo. 

The Hawk groaned at sight of it like a man with 
sore corns, but the cranky screw continued, however 
unsteadily, its revolutions. The heat was intense 
and the direct summer sun cast a shadowless glare 
over peeling stack, suspicious deck, paint-hungry 
sides. A sinister craft; as regiments contract the 


DEADLY WEAPONS 


31 


temperament of their colonels, so do merchant ves¬ 
sels assume a likeness to their commanders—sullen, 
ominous, a discord in that marine symphony, Cap¬ 
tain Goldthwaite’s ocean peddler advertised its mas¬ 
ter’s character to air and wave. 

Below, in the cabin forward, Dan Stone’s straight 
blue eyes grew bluer. His open smile widened. 

“Oh, she’s a rum ship, all right,” he grinned. 

The Greek philosopher who advised us to know 
ourselves counseled the impossible. The briefest 
experience suffices for a practical understanding of 
nature. A kitten need fall only once into the water 
and be rescued; it will dread drowning ever there¬ 
after. A baby needs few tumbles before he re¬ 
alizes that heights are best avoided. Yet, though 
the wasp born yesterday can to-day design and 
build its intricate nest, the longest life and the 
hardest study are not long enough or hard enough 
to furnish man with self-comprehension. He may 
acquire all the lore of the scholar, all the arts of 
business, but he will never thoroughly read his own 
mind and his own heart. He will tell his child that 
the attraction of gravity draws the loosened apple to 


32 


MONEY TO BURN 


the ground, but he can master nothing except the 
broadest principles of that inevitable law of cause 
and effect as it determines his own history. A Si¬ 
cilian slave throws away his worn-out sandal and 
thereby becomes a Roman general. Proceeding 
leisurely to his office, a rich New York broker 
pauses to buy a cravat that has attracted him from 
a haberdasher’s window, and so starts in motion a 
train of events that, five years later, makes him a 
pauper. Dan Stone set the broken leg of a dog 
in Brooklyn; that act sent him southward aboard 
the Hawk. 

“That’s what she is,” he repeated, “a rum ship.” 

He had, in his capacity of acting ship’s doctor, 
just concluded the professional portion of his call 
on the tramp’s only passenger. Seen by daylight, 
or by so much of it as the cabin permitted to enter. 
Stone presented a picture of the physically well- 
proportioned man; but so nicely balanced were his 
muscles that no gaze save a trained one would have 
marked him out for owning the unusual strength— 
the quick movement and long endurance—which he 
really possessed. 


DEADLY WEAPONS 


33 


Anybody not both anatomist and psychologist 
must have been preoccupied with his impetuous 
face, his frank glance that was too ready to accept 
the rest of the world on its own terms, and his 
boyishly unruly hair, tow colored and irreconcilably 
rebellions to the brushes; and anybody with a 
knowledge of the Hawk's captain would have won¬ 
dered how Stone came to be his medico and how 
long he could stand that tyrant’s gaff. 

From his bunk, the passenger echoed his physi¬ 
cian’s last word. “Rum?” He nearly pulled him¬ 
self to a sitting posture. “Is that what she is?” 

The Hawk was no floating fortress of free speech. 
Though few of the hands on that British boat un¬ 
derstood the English tongue, Stone glanced beyond 
the cabin door to make sure that he wasn’t over¬ 
heard. Then he glanced back at his mysterious 
patient. 

“I don’t mean liquor, Mr. Hoagland. Her liquor’s 
milk, all right, condensed milk, to be dropped here, 
there, and everywhere till we dump the last at 
Port of Spain; only I bet it’s curdled by now. I 
just meant she was—well, what Captain Gold- 


34 


MONEY TO BURN 


thwaite or any of his fellow countrymen would 
mean when they used the word that I used in the 
way 1 used it. She’s rum 

This patient was the only other American aboard, 
and if Stone’s presence furnished him with material 
for speculation, he was a puzzle to Stone. The 
acting doctor rarely indulged the vice of personal 
questions, but he found it hard to understand why 
so well-groomed a man—well groomed even in his 
illness—should have chosen this manifestly dis¬ 
reputable tramp when, as a hundred signs gave 
testimony to even this fresh-water physician, he was 
accustomed to ocean liners. However, the urbane 
Mr. Hoagland had kept largely to himself, and un¬ 
til stricken with ptomaine poisoning, mostly confined 
his conversation to the tempestuous captain and the 
latter’s malicious mate. 

The Haiuk, if she had made much more bad 
weather, would have been in real danger of foun¬ 
dering. During the storm which had swooped 
down upon them within an hour of their dropping 
Sandy Hook—which had, indeed, only yesterday 
subsided—she shipped veritable seas that seemed 


DEADLY WEAPONS 


35 


to push her completely beneath the surface of the 
ocean and hold her there until, miraculously, she 
wriggled back to life. 

Though possibly ignorant of her captain’s temper, 
Hoagland, who must have had some choice of boat, 
should have gleaned from the most cursory observa¬ 
tion a general idea of the Hawk's sea qualities be¬ 
fore ever he came aboard of her. Larger, more 
comfortable, and far swifter boats touched at all 
the ports at which the Hawk called, though their 
sailings might be fairly infrequent. It seemed to 
the doctor that Hoagland’s haste must, therefore, 
have been to leave America rather than to arrive 
at his destination. Did he have to hurry from his 
country for his country’s good? 

“You’re some doctor!” said he now; he was a 
wiry little man with thin hair and a snub nose. 
His eyes, of a gray that generally veiled their alert¬ 
ness by staring into vacancy, now turned with 
frank questioning directly on the figure in the door¬ 
way. “Why d’you pick a tub like this?” 

It was exactly the query that Dan Stone, M. D.- 
minus, would have liked to put to Hoagland. How- 


36 


MONEY TO BURN 


ever, he answered it easily enough. “Because I’m 
not really a doctor yet.” 

“No diploma?” 

“Third year and working my way through. First 
summer I was a second-rate hotel clerk at a third- 
rate seaside resort. Last year I was a hospital 
orderly. Two weeks ago the mate of this boat 
got in a scrap, and I happened along when he 
needed some first aid. The Hawk wanted a doctor 
and asked no questions; I wanted a job and 
didn’t ask any, either. So here I am.” 

It was his way to make light of his own hard¬ 
ships. He honestly laughed at them now. He 
didn’t like to talk about himself, and so he neglected 
to add that, nursing a dream about some day setting 
up practice in these latitudes, he wanted to better 
his already nearly perfect knowledge of Spanish, 
and that he wanted, also, to see something of West 
Indian ecclesiastical architecture. 

“Well,” persisted his patient, “hut why do you 
call it a rum ship?” 

Dan laughed again. He thought of the Hawk's 
rats, which scuttled over him when he tried to 


DEADLY WEAPONS 


37 


sleep. He was bunking with a crew that had no 
notion of personal cleanliness; even now he could 
smell the stench of their quarters; they never vol¬ 
unteered to police the place; its deck was a mass 
of filth, swabbed only when his threats of violence 
moved his messmates to sullen effort. But he 
laughed, because he had found that the easiest way 
of supporting tyranny, and all he said was: 

“You wouldn’t call it a champagne one, would 
you?” 

Rum it was, because rum furnished its com¬ 
mander with the chiefest of his preoccupations. 
Congressmen from the farm and senators that have 
never gone deeper than the Leviathan*s dining room 
have devised some well-intentioned laws for sailor 
folk; so has his Britannic majesty’s Parliament; but 
when a ship’s master is far at sea and his boat re¬ 
turns only once in five years to its home port, that 
master may become a master indeed. If he is a 
bully born, with a hatred of humanity because he 
can abuse it, and if he overstokes his temper with 
the fuel of alcohol, his ship will be as much a float¬ 
ing hell as ever was any slaver’s in the Middle 


38 


MONEY TO BURN 


Passage; and Captain Goldthwaite was exactly the 
sort of devil to meet all these requirements and en¬ 
joy them. 

For Stone, things had begun to go wrong when 
the Goddess of Liberty stolidly watched the Hawk 
pass her pedestal. The bull-necked, blue-nosed cap¬ 
tain had coveted the liberal graft to be acquired 
by surrendering his cabin to the unexpected and 
eleventh-hour passenger; but once his cabin was 
surrendered, he fell into an abiding rage because 
he had to occupy the mate’s instead. Cross-eyed 
Johnson, the mate, cursed at having to bunk with 
the engineer, whom he hated, and Dan, who had 
been promised a couch in the engineer’s quarters, 
was contemptuously housed with the doubtful 
West Indian crew. 

Being there, he was promptly treated as belong¬ 
ing. Almost the first warmth, when she nosed her 
way into the Gulf Stream, proved too much for the 
Hawk’s so-called cold-storage locker. The beef 
went bad and half the ship’s company with it. 
Hoagland, the solitary passenger, fell a victim. Dan 
saved himself by subsisting on pilot biscuit and cof- 


DEADLY WEAPONS 


39 


fee, yet that he saved the others was not charged 
to his credit. Captain Goldthwaite’s habit was to re¬ 
gard as less than human any being that lived for¬ 
ward; twice already he had raised his drunken 
but powerful hands against the doctor. 

“It’s my own fault,” Dan reflected; “I ought to 
have known better. I did. I knew Johnson was a 
brute the minute I saw him, and he as good as 
told me what his captain was. I’ve only myself to 
blame for ever shipping on this boat; but I won’t 
take any man’s fist and not come back at him. The 
day that Goldthwaite touches me,” Stone quietly 
vowed, “I’ll first knock him down and then leave 
the ship if I have to swim till I go under.” 

Now Hoagland, with a wry smile that drew his 
thin face into deep wrinkles, was answering Dan’s 
latest question with another: 

“No, I wouldn’t call it a champagne ship, but I 
might say it was a milk punch. What do you make 
of the captain?” 

Was the misplaced passenger asking all this be¬ 
cause he really wanted to learn more of the Hawk , 
or because he wanted to ferret out something about 


40 


MONEY TO BURN 


Stone? It was all too pointed to be the mere making 
of conversation. Dan had nothing to conceal, and 
therefore retained his natural reticence. 

“I haven’t seen enough of him to think anything 
worth repeating,” he said. He bade his patient a 
quick good-by and went on deck. 

The tramp had entered a bay and was skirting 
shores where luxuriant vegetation rose abruptly 
from the water’s edge and climbed mountain high 
behind. Tangles of greenery grew steep as a 
medieval city’s walls, from the sea grape to the 
banana fan, and so to strange varieties of palm. At 
the far head of the landlocked sea, a little town, 
all gleaming white and hot, peeped from its verdant 
frame. 

Dan accosted a passing member of the crew. 
“What’s this?” he asked. 

“Sanchez, Senor Medico.” 

The sailor pointed also to San Lorenzo, close off 
their port bow. He indicated, well to starboard, 
Santa Barbara de Samana. 

The profession of medicine and the study of 
church architecture do not entail a thorough knowl- 


DEADLY WEAPONS 


41 


edge of geography. Dan had understood that the 
city of Santo Domingo was to be their first call, and 
Jie now assumed that all this lay in their course 
thither. For the rest, it was enough for him that 
the way was beautiful and that he was passing over 
waters that Columbus sailed when he had his first 
glimpse of the New World. 

Bells rang out orders from above. The throb of 
rickety machinery suddenly stopped and gave the 
tired ship an instant’s rest. 

There came a cry from alongside and answering 
shouts from the bridge. A face appeared over the 
rail— w ide nose and thick lips, yet skin of purest 
copper, and straight black hair. The body that fol¬ 
lowed was clad in a dirty uniform bedecked with 
much gold lace; one foot wore a patent-leather 
dancing pump, the other a canvas tennis shoe. The 
negro Indian pilot climbed to the wheelhouse. A 
moment later, bulking Captain Goldthwaite passed 
Stone without so much as a nod, on his way 
below. 

The Hawk’s progress was anything but rapid. 
Dan waited until the swift tropical night descended 


42 


MONEY TO BURN 


and the yellow stars drooped close above the fun¬ 
nel. The land turned to lilac, and little lights began 
to appear on shore. 

Then cross-eyed Johnson hurried up to the Amer¬ 
ican. 

Notwithstanding Dan’s ministrations in the speak¬ 
easy and at the hospital, the mate had never pre¬ 
tended friendliness. Perhaps he realized the unex¬ 
pressed but low opinion in which he was held; cer¬ 
tainly, he had proffered the post of ship’s doctor, 
not out of gratitude of Stone, but because Stone’s 
casually announced desire for such a position pro¬ 
vided an opportunity to do Goldthwaite a good turn 
by getting him a medical officer at a low figure. 

“Where’ve you been?” The mate spoke always 
the broad tongue of Avonmouth, and now he spoke 
with an even more than usual brusqueness. 

“Here,” said Dan imperturbably. 

“Been a-lukin’ everywheres fur you.” 

“I’ve been in full view all the time.” 

“Well, you’re wanted.” 

“Where?” 


DEADLY WEAPONS 


43 


“In my cabin.” Johnson leered. “And,” he 
added, “I’d advise you ’urry, my lad!” 

Stone left him and went where ordered. His 
heart was hot. He wanted to practice obedience; 
but he was nearing the limits of his endurance. 
Until this afternoon, he had had small time for re¬ 
flection, but to-day’s respite, with the land so close, 
and the prospect of weeks of browbeating ahead, 
had determined him on a definite course of action 
that began with his recorded vow to meet possible 
force by certain retaliation. 

There was a small table in the mate’s stifling 
quarters. Here, under a smoking lamp, sprawled 
Captain Goldthwaite. His huge bulk slumped for¬ 
ward; his lurching elbows, supported by the table 
top, swelled the muscles of his arms until, over 
them, the coat sleeves strained tight. His monstrous 
shoulders were hunched to his hairy ears. A 
lowering, bestial face—his brows were knitted 
over a large book and over his repugnance for 
anything so contemptible as the printed page. His 
blue nose was a dark splash between his crimson 
cheeks; from his thick lips, curling scornfully, his 


44 MONEY TO BURN 

breath issued with a sibilant sound and, in this air¬ 
less cubby-hole, hung as heavily as that dive keep¬ 
er’s in the Brooklyn grog shop. Goldthwaite’s breath 
was rank with Barbados rum. 

“You sent for me?” asked Dan, and then he 
recognized the book and flushed. 

“Yes.” 

Goldthwaite growled the monosyllable. He had 
always detested the doctor, because the doctor would 
show no fear of him. Not able to wreak resentment 
on the passenger who had deprived him—at a good 
price—of his quarters, the captain fastened it on the 
sole compatriot of that passenger aboard. Now a 
drunken cunning had come to the aid of enmity and 
pointed a way to revenge—and to profit as well. 
The drunkard transfixed his auditor with a concen¬ 
trated glare. 

Dan did not so much as blink. He was resolved 
to make this fellow state his grievance. The cap¬ 
tain, on the other hand, was equally resolved to 
stare the medical student into startled speech, and 
then to take offense at it. Dan’s temper was longer 
than Goldthwaite’s, and Dan won. 


DEADLY WEAPONS 


45 


“I sent for you a half hour ago!” the captain sud¬ 
denly roared. “Where have you been hiding your¬ 
self?” 

“I have been on deck all afternoon.” 

“On deck! Why haven’t you been attending to 
your job?” 

“I haven’t any patients left except the passenger, 
and he won’t need me till eight bells, if even 
then.” 

“None of your lip! I’ve found out you’re no 
doctor—and I’ll have no damned lip from you!” 

Goldthwaite’s hairy right fist pounded the volume 
lying open on his table, and at that Dan winced. 
He had to speak decisively after all, but he kept as 
much anger from his voice as he could manage: 

“I don’t mean to be impudent, sir, but at the 
same time I want proper treatment in return.” 

Had the captain been sober, his reply would have 
been a blow. He was, of course, far from sober, 
and so there was no honesty in his rage. It was 
the slow rage that traps. He leaned back in his 
chair with an ugly grin and a choked oath. 

“Go on,” said he. 


46 


MONEY TO BURN 


Johnson had entered the cabin. With a twist of 
"his crossed eye, he grunted an echo to his master s 
order. 

“I never pretended to be a graduate physician” 
Dan quietly continued; “but I was shipped as doc¬ 
tor and Fve been treated like a deck hand. Gradu¬ 
ate or not, Fve saved half your crew for you, and 
all Fve got in return is curses—almost blows. 
Our agreement hasn’t once been kept—on your part 
or Johnson’s.” 

“So that's it?” sneered the captain. “Well, what 
do you want?” 

The mate grunted again. Dan cleared his throat; 
he spoke with firmness. “I’m going to have my 
pay to date and leave this ship at Santo Domingo 
City.” 

Whether or not that statement was expected, he 
never knew. It served, in any case, as the open¬ 
ing for an attack, which was what Goldthwaite 
wanted. 

“Leave the ship?” The captain sprang up with 
such violence that even Johnson drew aside. 
“Desert, will you? You signed for the voyage, and 


DEADLY WEAPONS 


47 


I’ll have you in irons in five minutes!” He leaned 
across the table and shook a fist under Dan’s 
nose. 

“If you do that,” began Stone, “I’ll-” 

“Law?” screamed the captain before any men¬ 
tion could be made of courts. “Don’t you talk to 
me about law! You signed as a doctor and you 
ain’t one. What’ll the law say to that? A doctor!” 
He thumped the volume again, and his descending 
paw tore loose one of its treasured pages. “John¬ 
son found this book in your duffel hag, didn’t you, 
Johnson? And what’s it about? Medicine? No! 
It’s all about how they built churches. Now then, 
young fellow, you go to jail ashore for a faker—- 
breaking the regulations governing ships’ doctors— 
or else you stay aboard of us without pay!” 

The guile of this tyrant was unworthy of its 
name. His flagrant scheme was to punish Dan and 
at the same time divert to his own pocket the 
medico’s wages. Goldthwaite’s right hand went up 
again. Its open palm, thrust over the table, caught 
Stone across the face. 



48 MONEY TO BURN 

Dan staggered back. When, in an instant, sight 
returned, he saw the captain in the act of wrench¬ 
ing the cover from the book. 

There are not extant a dozen samples of the 1620 
edition of Amades Lizarrago’s monumental work on 
“The Cathedrals and Churches of New Spain,” and 
this copy was one of them. It was priceless in the 
old-book market, but, poor as he was, Dan Stone 
would never have sold his copy. Along with a use¬ 
less passion for the lesser phases of ecclesiastical 
architecture and a hundred or two other old vol¬ 
umes, that book formed the only legacy left him by 
the father he had loved. 

The captain’s last act was too much for Dan. 
He vaulted the table. 

Goldthwaite sprang back until the cabin wall 
stopped him. He whipped out a pistol and fired. 
One of Stone’s fists knocked up the weapon not an 
instant too soon; the other drove itself into the 
captain’s raging face. 

Almost at once the thing had happened. Johnson 
stood motionless, so amazed at this marvel of re¬ 
sistance as to be unable to help his superior officer. 


DEADLY WEAPONS 


49 


Goldthwaite, on his part, was too dissipated a 
bully to stand punishment. His eyes started from 
their sockets. As if a painter’s brush swept over 
them, his cheeks turned purple; his mouth screwed 
upward on one side, like the mouth of a man in a 
fit, and he pitched over and fell his full length on 
the floor. 

“You’ve murdered him! You’ll swing for this! 
My God, you’ll swing for it!” 

Cross-eyed Johnson came to life with his declara¬ 
tion of Goldthwaite’s leaving it. He sprang between 
Dan and the doorway. 

Stone gave one look at the captain’s form. It 
was horribly still. He wheeled and with one 
sweep of his arm drove the mate aside. A steep 
flight of stairs ascended directly from the corridor. 
Dan plunged up them. 

He heard the cross-eyed man yell, heard the 
pounding of the mate’s feet in gaining pursuit, but 
he reached the deck. 

There were sailors about. They looked up at 
the noise of his approach. 

“Stop him!” shrieked Johnson. 


50 MONEY TO BURN 

Dan ran to the rail. He climbed it. He poised 
there one instant only. Then he flung his hands 
together above his head and dived over the side, 
through the darkness, toward the invisible sea. 


CHAPTER IY 


THE BEACH COMBER 

gTONE was a good swimmer. On this night of 
his plunge from the Hawk , he needed all his 
strength and all his art. 

It was with the speed of a St. Moritz toboggan 
that he struck the water a few yards beyond the 
ship’s side. Down he went among the cool recesses 
—and still down. His ears roared, his chest col¬ 
lapsed, yet there kept ringing in his consciousness 
those words which spurred his every muscle to 
escape: 

“You’ll swing for this! By God, you’ll swing 
for it!” 

Still down! 

He remembered having heard that, somewhere off 
Porto Rico, Mount Everest itself could be all but 
submerged. He seemed to be plumbing a scarcely 
minor abyss. Nevertheless, there is a level at which 
sea water refuses the unprotected body of a hu- 


52 


MONEY TO BURN 


man diver. He reached that at last, and from it 
was catapulted upward. 

Lights overhead—stars. Lights directly in front 
of him—a town. He struck out for it. 

Blue parrot fish swam with him; he could not 
see them. Striped “sergeant majors” fled his ap¬ 
proach. A cub shark followed him—and then turned 
tail. 

It turned tail because Dan found himself among 
breakers. He fought. He was tossed high. He be¬ 
lieved he was lost, but the tide was with him, and 
the underpull light. One great wave flung him land¬ 
ward; he lowered his feet. Waist deep in the water, 
he stood on comfortingly firm sands. 

He was penniless; the threat of the disgraceful 
gallows, or of an almost equally disgraceful prison 
term for manslaughter overpowered him. The 
chances of capture were a hundred to one, and if 
he went free for the present, he might never show 
himself in his chosen profession. To do so would 
be to court attention. He thought of that even now. 
The career he had struggled so hard to make pos¬ 
sible must be abandoned. As for any immediate 


THE BEACH COMBER 


53 


course, he dared not enter the town, and yet he was 
too near exhaustion to go beyond it. 

He staggered down the damp darkness of the 
beach. Here, though the sky was illumined over¬ 
head, the night was impenetrable. His right foot 
struck something that moved with a groan; he 
bounded aside, and his left kicked a body that swore 
cordially. The sands were full of derelict men, 
seeking sleep. With a resignation that made him 
one of them, Dan sank down, at last more desirous 
of rest than of escape. 

The town’s water-front street was not a hundred 
yards away, and under its rare lamps he could 
see barefoot citizens parading with umbrellas raised 
against the supposedly evil effects of starshine. The 
heat of the day was gone, the air was chilly, and 
he was wet through. He burrowed into the sand. 

“Look out there! Don’t crowd.” 

Dan gasped an apology to the invisible neighbor 
whom he had discommoded. 

The fellow was evidently an American. “There’s 
plenty of room on San Lorenzo sands,” he grumbled. 

San Lorenzo! Dan had assumed that, during his 


54 


MONEY TO BURN 


interview in the cabin, the Hawk had progressed 
toward her announced destination: 

“This isn’t Santo Domingo?” 

The voice of his fellow beach comber cackled a 
feeble laugh: “What sort o’ rum do you drink? 
Course it’s Santo Domingo, but San Domingo City’s 
clear across the island, an’ if you’ve just come to 
Espanola, why, take it from me, you’ve come to the 
nearest thing to hell this side of the real place. 

He dropped into a low monologue of anathemas. 
This was a land of fever and sudden death; the 
towns were barbarous, the jungle savage. In the in¬ 
terior, human sacrifices established the reign of the 
worshiped snake; San Lorenzo’s saloons were out¬ 
numbered by the hounforts of sorcerers. Neither 
Dan’s silence nor the livid objections of other sleepy 
loafers discouraged the diatribe. 

“If you don’t take your hat off and say ‘Good 
day’ before you ask a nigger for a job, he’ll tell 
you he’ll cut your heart out and drink your blood; 
and if you turn your back, he’ll make good, too. 
And don’t you get sick here. If you do, they’ll call 
in a witch doctor. I had the jimjams last week. 


THE BEACH COMBER 


55 


They took me to the municipal hospital. The cots 
are dirty mattresses on the floor, and the chickens 
walk over you. All they do for you’s give you one 
mess o’ red beans and then let you die.” 

He rumbled on. The oaths of the surrounding 
company ended in discouragement. Even Dan ceased 
to listen. 

Where was the pursuit? And what, if it failed, 
was he to do? 

It was barely conceivable that Johnson counted 
him drowned; but even if he was not sought, his 
plight was desperate. Small opportunity for a med¬ 
ical student in this isle of witchcraft—and for a 
medical student who, if recognized, would be ar¬ 
rested as a murderer. Ecclesiastical architecture? 
Dan smiled grimly at the darkness. In the little 
town where he had been brought up, that Penn- 
sylvania-Dutch lawyer who administered the elder 
Stone’s estate—comprising, as he thought, nothing 
save valueless books—had cautioned the heir: 

“Your pop was the kindest-hearted man as effer 
lived, but he hadn’t an eye for money yet. If you 
want to git along, boy, keep your eyes off’n print.” 


56 MONEY TO BURN 

And now, because of a printed book, Dan had 
incurred a capital charge! Despair propped wide 
his eyelids. 

He thought of his father, and his father’s high 
sense of honor—his father, who had had such hopes 
for his boy, such faith in his son’s future, his father 
who, though not himself successful in any worldly 
way, had given so much more than the worldly to 
young Dan. He could have wished that that book 
had never been given! 

Dawn came at last, or rather full morning. Would 
capture accompany it? 

One minute, the waters were dark as midnight, 
the next, and with the smell of seaweed at low 
tide, the silver gulls and “longtails” in silver spray 
flew above a sea of dancing gold. Dan’s neighbors 
sat up, stretching and scratching, in every conclud¬ 
ing stage of rascally vagabondage, negroes from 
Haiti and Martinique, Frenchmen from Marseilles, 
outcast Britons dismissed by the Bahamas, Spanish, 
Portuguese, Italians, Levantines, and the New York 
wharf rat who had cursed Santo Domingo—the 
sweepings of fifty ports from Glasgow and Varna 


THE BEACH COMBER 


57 


to Demerara and the Chagres. Over on the water¬ 
front street gaudily dressed mulatto women ap¬ 
peared, hands on swaying hips, baskets of green and 
yellow mangoes balanced on their turbaned heads. 

Through these a tall, fat man in spotless white 
pushed his easy way. He led by the arm a shy and 
graceful girl, and walked with magnificent uncon¬ 
cern straight among the riffraff of the beach. 

In those surroundings the mere physical cleanli¬ 
ness of the newcomers shone like ice. The man’s 
broad Panama was the largest Dan had ever seen. 
It surmounted a wide, dark face with eyes distinctly 
Latin, very bright and quick. Full lips smiled ur¬ 
banely under a sweeping mustache, when not hid¬ 
den by a plump hand, the nails of which strong 
teeth bit now and then, as by some habit acquired 
in childhood and never overcome. To the wrist of 
this hand a leather thong secured a Malacca cane, 
and, when the fingers were not at the mouth, 
the stick was swung with utter carelessness of 
its frequent descent upon the backs of beach 
combers scuttling like beetles before it. 

Dan had lounged away. He addressed a fellow 


58 MONEY TO BURN 

who might hail from Caracas: “Quien esta el rico 

senor?” 

The South American shrugged. He didn’t know 
who the rich gentleman might be. Besides, what 
difference could it make? The rich were rich 
because they hung on to their money, not because 
they peppered the sands with dominieanos! 

“It were better to inquire about the woman,” the 
derelict concluded with a look in reply to which 
Dan’s kick sent him sprawling. 

The girl was a picture of dusky loveliness, pure, 
and pure Spanish. She slightly turned her ankle 
in the sands and the lace covering fell from her 
head and frightened face—a face that one would 
say was merely peeping in at life’s door and not 
liking what it saw there well enough to enter. 
Her glance met Dan’s; she blushed and hurriedly 
replaced the mantilla. 

An opening tea rose blown upon an ash heap. 
Stone felt the dust upon him; he turned aside. 

As he did so his eyes swept the bay. San Lo¬ 
renzo boasted no docks; the men of ships must 
come ashore in boats. Well, there was the Hawk 


THE BEACH COMBER 


59 


and a longboat putting off from her! The medical 
student wheeled again and found himself closely 
face to face with the man in white. 

“Can you give me a job?” 

The startled question rose to his tongue at the 
thought that here might be a planter from the in¬ 
terior about to return thither, and it proved well 
grounded. It came instinctively in English, but in 
English the large man at once smilingly replied: 

“This is a strange question, and you do not 
look as if you belonged”—the speaker smiled down 
at the denizens of the foreshore—“as if you be¬ 
longed here. What sort of work do you want?” 

Out of the corner of an eye Dan studied the har¬ 
bor. He saw the Hawk’s boat hurrying to shore 
like a water spider. 

“Any kind,” said he. 

The Panama shook a soft negative. “Any kind is 
no kind. I fear-” 

“I can do ’most all sorts of unskilled labor.” 
Stone extended a detaining hand. “I’m a third-year 
medical student, but-” 

He stopped short. He could have bitten out his 


60 


MONEY TO BURN 


tongue. Medical student! If he was to be sought 
by the police, that would be one of the first terms 
used to describe him. It should therefore be the 
last for him to employ, and yet it was this very 
word of betrayal that caught the big man s atten¬ 
tion. At mention of medicine his smile passed. 
He was all interest. 

“A doctor?” 

The error had been made now. Dan might as 
well tell a part of the truth. “Not quite,” said he. 

“But almost? Yes? Why, then, perhaps—listen, 
senor. On my sugar plantation the one man in¬ 
valuable who truly understands the machinery is too 
ill to move. I am but now arrived, waiting that a 
doctor’s office should open, but despairing that a 
medico should leave his practice for me. If you 
could prove yourself what you say, it would be 
worth to me anything—anything.” The bright black 
eyes appraised the American rapidly. “It would 
be worth to me one thousand dollars monthly. Be¬ 
sides, these two San Lorenzo doctors of course speak 
Spanish. I prefer a foreigner. There has been 


THE BEACH COMBER 


61 


talk of peonage—groundless, most assuredly, but 
still—you do not know Spanish?” 

The tone of the question plainly asked for a 
negative answer. Two hundred yards away, the 
boat was landing. 

“No,” said Dan desperately. 

“Ah, then if you could prove that you have suf¬ 
ficient knowledge of medicine—you have papers that 
no doubt will substantiate-” 

The young American ran his hands through his 
unruly hair. He spoke so fast that his words fell 
over one another’s heels. 

“Senor,” said he, “I can’t. I’ve no papers. But 
didn’t I tell you I was a third-year student—tell you 
before I could guess what you wanted? Only get 
me away from here—get me away from here 
quick!” He saw Johnson stepping ashore. Evi¬ 
dently a hurried and fruitless search of the previous 
night was now to be renewed by day. It must 
be made fruitless to the end! “I was ship’s doctor 
on that tramp out there. I killed a man in a fight. 
I give you my word it was an accident, but it 
looked bad, and they’re after me.” He put the 



62 


MONEY TO BURN 

stranger directly between him and the search party. 
He appealed to the girl: “Senorita, you 

The girl was watching him with wide-eyed fas¬ 
cination, but, at his appeal to her, she seemed to 
draw back, and her hand made a gesture as if 
of dissent. 

The planter interrupted quickly: “My niece does 
not speak English. Nevertheless, you did indeed 
call yourself a medical student before I had spoken 
of a physician . 5 He looked over his shoulder and 
observed and understood the hustle at the boat. 
“Walk slowly,” he concluded, “but ahead of us and 
in this direction, opposite to your pursuers. I think 
that I may be persuaded to engage your professional 
services.” 


CHAPTER Y 


A SHADOW AT A DOOR 

jP*ROM San Lorenzo’s water front, Dan paced 
slowly inland, the broad man in white shield¬ 
ing his retreat, one hand agrip of the veiled girl 
beside him. They skirted half the town. 

“To the right now!” 

His smiling dark face bent forward and over the 
shorter Dan. He popped a cigar into the American’s 
wonderingly opened mouth and plumped his flam¬ 
boyant Panama on the American’s head, which was 
two sizes too small for it. 

“So!” he said in a rich tone of self-congratulation 
at his foresight. “You must not attract too much 
attention, but / may be a gentleman taking hatless 
the early air.” 

They turned into a street lined by tamarind trees. 
Barefoot mulattoes made way for them with the 
inherent courtesy that the Domingan always ex- 


64 


MONEY TO BURN 


hibits on a thoroughfare. In the middle distance 
two soldiers in ragged blue lounged toward them. 
“Stop!” 

The stranger paused before a providential public 
surrey, drawn by two humble horses. The negro 
driver glowed and saluted with his whip. Then 
he looked inquiry. 

“To Sanchez,” Stone’s protector directed the jehu, 
“and double pay for double speed once we’ve turned 
the corner of the Corniche.” He lifted the girl 
into the front seat and overshadowed Dan in the 
rear. “To the coffeehouse of Jose Logrono in the 
Street of the Pink Turtledoves. And thereafter— 
forget!” 

The driver appeared used to such instructions. 
Without parley, he lashed his beasts, and Dan sank 
against the moth-eaten cushions, too weak and too 
grateful to he inquisitive. 

He saw the town recede on either hand. They 
turned, beyond it, into the shore road, between the 
open water and a natural hedge of prickly pear 
and red cedar. The horses were lashed to a 
gallop, the crazy surrey canopy swayed like a boat 


A SHADOW AT A DOOR 65 

in a land swell. Dan saw the girl tossed this 
way and that; she did not cry out, but she clutched 
the seat back with delicate fingers, the knuckles 
straining through their satin skin. 

The lady ” he began. He had turned to 
find his benefactor’s brilliant eyes steadily con¬ 
templating him. 

“She will not be hurt. My niece understands 
our Domingan conveyances, as she understands other 
matters Domingan. Speak rather of yourself. I 
wish to hear more of your medical education.” 

He used the calm of one accustomed to obedience. 
Talk of any sort was more of a physical feat than 
an intellectual amusement in that rattling carriage, 
and Dan was never a man to consider himself an in¬ 
teresting topic. Nevertheless, the stranger’s ques¬ 
tions were pointed, and Stone managed to answer 
them. That his replies were satisfactory was evi¬ 
denced by the inquisitor’s frequent nods of approval, 
and the long cross-examination was still in progress 
when they entered what Dan concluded must be 
the city of Sanchez. 

“Slower here!” the big man ordered. 


66 


MONEY TO BURN 


Speed would now have been, indeed, impossible. 
The streets were narrow and crooked; they were 
ill paved and full of rotting refuse and of a human 
rabble equally decayed. Gray palaces of the early 
sixteenth century were elbowed by modern huts 
in staring yellow or impertinent pink. On the 
ruined wall of a stately dwelling that must once 
have housed some Spanish hidalgo there blazed 
the green-and-red poster of a music hall. Gambling 
hells and low saloons pressed upon squalid shops; 
haphazard electric wires drooped dangerously from 
fragile poles bending under the weight of lolling 
loafers. 

“Here,” said the planter with the manner of an 
apologetic host, “you see the worst of the Re - 
publica Dominicana. It is the mixture of blood 
that affects this.” He drew himself up until his 
head nearly touched the carriage top. “I, for my 
part, am pure Castilian.” 

Whether from a lurch of the surrey or interest 
in her uncle’s tone, Dan saw that the head of the 
girl turned slightly and, against the farther edge 
of the black mantilla, he caught a glimpse of 


A SHADOW AT A DOOR 


67 


her pale, cameolike profile. His new employer 
must also have noted the shift in her position. 
He added hastily: 

“Oh, all of our family, to be sure, are of the 
Spanish blood only! My sainted wife—God rest 
her soul!—and her deceased brother—the saints 
preserve him!—who was my dear niece’s father, 
their ancestors were among the first to come to this 
island from old Spain and establish the plantation 
to which we now go.” 

For any evidence in her expression, his niece 
might not have heard him. Dan was watching 
it when he recalled that her uncle had said that 
she did not understand English. Resides, as Villeta 
finished his brief genealogical statement, she again 
faced the horses. 

They were passing the neglected remains of a 
once splendid church. Dan’s glance caressed it; 
his theoretical knowledge could date it almost to 
the day of its consecration. But his guide had 
evidently concluded that the time was come to repay 
some of Stone’s personal information in kind. 

“My name,” said he in his silken voice, “is 


68 


MONEY TO BURN 


Ramon Diego Villeta y Cortez. Unlike most persons 
of my caste in this country, I raise some herds 
of cattle, but as I intimated to you, senor, I possess 
a large sugar plantation.” Again there was a 
movement from the seat forward, hut this time the 
planter plainly ignored it. “To that has come 
an order very big and very pressing. Well then, 
at such a moment, my only engineer—he is taken 
ill. He has spasms—convulsions. He says that he 
has suffered thus before. He says that it is what 
you doctors call uraemic poisoning. Is this”—Don 
Ramon smiled ingratiatingly—“is this urgent?” 

Dan tore his eyes from the church. “Urgent? 
If he diagnoses his own case correctly, it’s all that 
and then some.” 

Villeta explained symptoms. 

“He may be cured at once,” said Dan, “or he 
may be dead before we arrive.” 

The Domingan shrugged. “It is far into the 
interior that we must go.” 

They were drawing toward the squalid outskirts 
of Sanchez. Don Ramon waved the driver to a 


A SHADOW AT A DOOR 


69 

series of inconspicuous streets and bade him reduce 
the pace and proceed more slowly still. 

“You observe,” lie pursued to his guest, “that 
I take you on faith. I have told my name. What 
is yours?” 

“Dan Stone.” The American gulped as he pro¬ 
nounced it. “Daniel Gurney Stone.” 

“On the ship where you met with your little— 
let us say ‘accident’ ”—Villeta’s broad shoulders 
shook the matter casually away—“you had signed 
in that complete manner?” 

“No. Simply D. G. Stone.” 

“I see. Well, now, a silly law makes it im¬ 
perative that we register at the coffeehouse because 
we shall be delayed there for a couple of hours. 
I suggest to you, sehor, that it might be the part 
of wisdom to forget the surname—temporarily. 
That would in no way be using a false name if 
the authorities should by the merest chance inquire 
—just forgetfulness. My advice is that you call 
yourself Daniel Gurney.” 

Dan said nothing. He did not like subterfuge, 
but he cared still less for the gallows or the jail. 


70 


MONEY TO BURN 


He would call himself anything the planter sug¬ 
gested—he had called himself a fool throughout 
the past night—and yet, though Villeta seemed the 
soul of frankness, Stone had some feeling of mis¬ 
trust for him. The planter was plausible, hut too 
ready to accept a runaway. However, here and 
now was no place or time for self-communion of 
such sort, for hesitation of any sort whatever. 

“Very good, sir,” said Dan. 

They were climbing the narrowest and foulest 
of all the streets thus far encountered. The horses 
slipped on the slops, and the girl on the front 
seat pressed a lace handkerchief to her nose. Be¬ 
hind the red jalousies of doorways was the glimpse 
of already tired inhabitants; dark children reached 
up brown hands for coppers. Don Ramon shooed 
them off with his jeweled fingers like so many 
flies. 

“The tropics,” he smiled at Dan, “do not make 
for American hustle. Except for the engineer, my 
workmen are all natives. They also are tired— 
like this. They mean no harm, but the siesta 
is consolatory. So, when they feel like taking it, 


A SHADOW AT A DOOR 


71 


they have the slightly awkward habit of suspend¬ 
ing labor by throwing a stone into the machinery. 
That is why Tucker’s health is so important to me. 
Ah,” he exclaimed as the carriage stopped before a 
grimy-white building that was just sleepily open¬ 
ing for the day, “here is our present destination!” 

He paid the driver—whose exultant “Gracias!” 
bore instant testimony to the size of the reward— 
and, again leading the veiled girl, pushed Dan 
before him into a small, dark compartment set 
with tables and high-backed benches. From among 
these, an aproned host-waiter appeared and bowed 
low in patent recognition. 

“Jose,” said Don Ramon, “your parlor, at once!” 
He clapped his fat hands. “I shall have to leave 
this American senor there for a short time, and 
you will send coffee to him; coffee, two eggs 
a la coq , some of your wife’s delicious rolls, butter, 
honey—yes, and a bit of fresh fish if you have it. 
He is very hungry.” 

There was something superbly authoritative about 
the Domingan, something that, with radiant gesture, 
swept aside all the superfluous. He did not appear 


72 


MONEY TO BURN 


to miss the smallest details, even in ordering a 
breakfast, but it was plain that his was the sort 
of mind that prefers to deal in large things in 
a large way. Don Ramon looked to Dan, even in 
this moment when reflection were absurd, like the 
magnificent real-estate operator or contractor who, 
scorning the mere building of one house, erects, 
on an empty hillside, an entire suburb of a great 
city. 

The American was indeed very hungry, and he 
was glad when the trio of them were obsequiously 
bowed to a moldy living room on the floor above. 
The girl, at last released by Don Ramon, seated 
herself in the darkest comer, her mantilla still 
concealing her face. Dan, at his employer s order, 
forced his mind strictly to business and wrote out 
prescriptions for such medicines as he thought 
might be needed by his distant patient. 

Don Ramon watched him, biting his nails the 
while. When the orders were completed: 

“I shall borrow your hat,” said he jovially, “and 
proceed on these errands.” He retook his Panama 
with a flourish. “I shall buy you another head 


A SHADOW AT A DOOR 


73 


covering. Doctor Gurney—oh, do not shudder at the 
appellation!—and I shall procure you ah alpaca coat 
that will more or less fit. Rest here until I come 
back. You are best not observed—is it not so?” 

Was the question put out of pure kindness, or 
could there be just the hint of a warning in it 
vaguely connected with Don Ramon himself? Dan 
wondered. He was beginning to wonder about a 
good many things. 

Involuntarily his eyes turned toward the shadowy 
figure of the girl. He recalled in time that he had 
said he did not know Spanish. 

“If only the senorita spoke English,” he said, 
“the time would pass all too rapidly in the company 
of your very charming niece.” 

He may have spoken with too obvious gallantry. 
At any rate, Don Ramon’s hand went to his mus- 
tached mouth, and the planter frowned uneasily: 

“The Senorita Gertruda requires a constitutional,” 
said he. “She will of course accompany me.” 

He bowed low to his niece. She rose slowly 
and took his proffered arm. Her manner might well 
be slightly bewildered, but it was oddly obedient to 


74 


MONEY TO BURN 


her uncle. The planter, however, was all smiles. 
He led the girl from the room, humming blithely 
an old Domingan song: 

“My mistress is a lady—a lady—his lady; 

She smiles, her lord not looking, and throws a rose to 
me-” 

Well, he couldn’t mean his niece by that! Dan 
tried to forget her, hut over the edge of the depart¬ 
ing mantilla, a pair of sloe-black eyes had given 
him a glance that was almost an appeal and yet 
at the same time rebuff. He walked toward the 
window and looked down through the half open 
shutter, held wide at its base by a stick to let in 
the morning air before the sun should rise so 
high as to demand its barricade. 

Don Ramon was still audibly humming as he 
passed up the street with the girl on his arm, 
hut the words of his song could no longer be 
distinguished. The Senorita Gertruda seemed in 
no hurry. Clearly the girl was unhappy about 
something. There were few other pedestrians in 
view, yet as the pair below proceeded, Dan sud- 


A SHADOW AT A DOOR 75 

denly saw a shadow detach itself from a doorway 
opposite the coffee house of the Street of the Pink 
Turtledoves and cautiously follow the Domingans. 

There could be no doubt as to its identity. It 
was the solitary passenger of the Hawk , the Ameri¬ 
can, Hoagland! 


CHAPTER VI 


IN THE DARK 

r "pWO hot hours later, Villeta and his party were 
aboard the slipshod train that—when so in¬ 
clined and hurricanes permit—strolls, now and then, 
between Sanchez and Concepcion de la Vega, the 
mantilla-hidden girl, package-laden Don Ramon, and 
Dan suitably clothed and restored to some semblance 
of his proper self. Dan’s eyes had swept the 
Sanchez station for a renewed glimpse of Hoag- 
land, and he breathed a sigh of relief when they 
could not find him. Nor had the passenger been 
anywhere in sight when Villeta and his niece 
returned to Jose’s coffeehouse, and, since the planter 
had seemingly chanced to elude his unsuspected 
stalker, Stone maintained silence concerning him. 

“Don Ramon,” Dan finally reasoned, “appears 
to have arguments of his own for avoiding in¬ 
vestigations. If I tell him his association with me 
has been observed and has resulted in an attempt 


IN THE DARK 


77 


to follow him, he may think better of his bargain 
and decide to leave me behind,” 

That is what Stone’s conscious self contended; 
but there is in every man a self more subtle. Dan’s 
subconsciousness remained unsatisfied regarding the 
very genial Santo Domingan. 

Some qualms, at all events, Villeta, on his part, 
must have had. When the train was delayed 
by an upturned switch just east of the terminus 
of La Vega, he ordered a premature descent lest— 
so he said—telegrams had advised the police there 
to be on the lookout for Dan’s arrival, and the 
speed with which he conducted the exit of his 
party was worthy of admiration. 

Here the air was bracing. Though La Vega 
lay on a flat savanna, mountains rose not far away, 
and one especially beautiful peak held the Ameri¬ 
can’s gaze. 

“Ah, yes”—his guide was instantly aware of 
his preoccupation—“our beautiful Yaqui of the 
Cordilleras del Cibao. Myself, I prefer the Sierra 
de Monte Cristi and the dead volcanic north.” 
He made a wide gesture. “Alas, it is in the opposite 


78 


MONEY TO BURN 


direction that onr path lies. We must leave this 
exquisite city—though it has, for its beauty, been 
called the love city of Santo Domingo. We must 
go tediously through the Dark Country. That 
striking acclivity yonder is the Cerro Santo, on 
which Senor Christopher Columbus, some four hun¬ 
dred and thirty years ago, placed one of his first 
great crosses in the New World. Now, turn to 
the left!” 

But Dan fastened his fascinated gaze on the 
magnificent cathedral that shared with the Holy 
Hill” dominion over the little city. There was a 
picture of this in the volume that Goldthwaite had 
destroyed; among the bitter recollections such 
thought awakened, Stone hardly noticed that once 
more they were threading by-streets—Villeta’s 
knowledge of these towns seemed inexhaustible 
and that they were proceeding to an inn, where 
mules awaited them, a broken-nosed Carib in charge. 

“Senor Medico,” said Don Ramon, “this is my 
faithful and devoted Luis.” In Spanish he added 
to the Indian: “Is there any news?” 


IN THE DARK 


79 


The tone was suspiciously altered for the last 
words, which received a negative reply from the 
Indian; but before Dan could weigh this distinc¬ 
tion, an inquisitive landlord, who did not appear 
to know Villeta by sight, began to question him. 
Don Ramon, after a moment’s survey of the man, 
became effusive in explanation: 

“We are bound for Santo Cerro, to be sure, for 
the sugar plantation of the illustrious Senor 
Guanito. Come, Luis, let us start. We must arrive 
at our destination before sundown.” 

They mounted, the girl evidently friendly to her 
side saddle, and with elaborate adieus trotted off. 
Santo Cerro lay, as a matter of fact, toward the 
Sierras. The landlord watched the caravan set out 
in that direction; it seemed doubtful to Dan, how¬ 
ever, if he saw them sharply turn at the next 
street to the left and proceed rapidly into a road 
to the southwest. 

It was market day. La Yega was gay with 
farmers and their families from the uplands, men, 
women and children, creoles and mulattoes, in blue 


80 MONEY TO BURN 

denim, silk sashes and brilliant bodices, high som¬ 
breros and crimson turbans. Any party leaving 
the town was a party after their own hearts; the 
elders waved brown palms, the youngsters toddled 
up and offered each a cheek for kissing. Dan 
saw the senorita’s lithe shoulders heave, saw her 
bend to pat the curly head of a laughing boy. 
He pressed his mount forward, he knew not why, 
and, as her hand returned, it brushed his. 

“Now,” said Don Ramon, immediately pushing 
between, “now you shall see the true Santo Do- 
mingo.” 

They made first for the plains and among the 
sources of the Yaqui del Norte, with its miraculous 
waterfalls, its rapids boiling over rocks of every 
brilliant shade. Luis headed the line, the girl 
followed, and Villeta and Dan, where it was pos¬ 
sible, went abreast to bring up the rear. 

The spirited planter never ceased a continual 
flow of conversation. The rich tones of it, warning 
roadside rodents and other minute animal life of 
the wilderness, caused strange rustling escapes be- 


IN THE DARK 


81 


side them, the flapping retreats of brilliantly winged 
birds camouflaged until they were nearly within 
a hand’s reach, and contrasted oddly with the 
silence of the guide and the girl. Dan was sud¬ 
denly aware that he had not yet heard the Senorita 
Gertruda’s voice. He discovered himself wondering 
what it would be like. 

Once only was the order of march shifted, and 
the shift revealed that the Indian lived in mortal 
terror of his master. 

Ramon interrupted some jovial description of 
local customs to urge his mount ahead with cer¬ 
tain instructions for the guide. The trail was 
overgrown, and Luis intent on picking it; a bam¬ 
boo stalk slipped from his protective grasp and 
brushed the Castilian’s swarthy cheek. As if it 
were a thunderbolt, that stalk slew Villeta’s smile. 

“Quita alia!” he cried, and added a thumping 
oath. “Es possible?” 

A moment ago, Luis had looked anything but 
a coward. Now, as he turned in his saddle, stark 
terror stared from his eyes. Don Ramon, with 


82 


MONEY TO BURN 


a single blow, knocked him clear of his mule and 
a yard into the thicket. 

As quickly as it had come, however, the storm 
passed. Luis returned, his face a tangle of thorn 
scratches, to his ever-advancing post, and Villeta, 
resuming his smile as a man might pick up his 
hat, came back to Dan and continued his anecdote. 

The girl rode on with bowed head, and the 
American marveled at her stoicism no less than at 
his own self-control. He was sure that the former 
arose from some mysterious fear of her uncle 
rather than from a tropical callousness; the latter 
he dared not trace to its source. He vowed that 
if Villeta were in any way half so cruel to the 
girl as to the servant, he—Dan—would forcibly 
take up her cause. Then he laughed bitterly for 
his impulsiveness, and youthfully swore to himself 
he would never be impulsive again. 

Nor, with the passing of his brief shower of 
anger, did the planter exhibit the faintest need for 
further mistrust. His smile was open, and his 
luminous eyes kept turning toward Stone in frank 


IN THE DARK 


83 


good nature. Within five minutes more, it jvas 
next to impossible to believe him guilty of what all 
eyes had seen. 

The pilgrims reached roads of sorts and, before 
these ceased, climbed along their dusty and uneven 
tracks. Now heavy vegetation steamed all about; 
again appeared open spaces dotted by thatched 
and whitewashed huts and broken by tiny farms. 
The first valleys were fragrant with the perfume 
of coffee blossoms grown in the shade of trees de¬ 
signed for the aromatic plants’ protection; higher 
up, these surrendered to maize and sweet potatoes, 
and, as the very heights approached, to fields of 
millet. 

Finally the travelers dipped to the edge of the 
great jungle of the interior. Straight into this 
Luis nosed an invisible way for more than two 
miles. Then, out of an unexpected clearing rose 
the ruins of a forgotten castle, its fallen masonry 
overgrown by rank weeds, among which lizards 
darted to their holes; and here the sudden sun 
flashed a farewell and sank. The party was in 


84 MONEY TO BURN 

total darkness and must so remain until moon and 
stars should achieve nocturnal brilliancy. 

Luis, with the aid of a flash lamp, made their 
preparations for the night. Out of miraculous sad¬ 
dlebags he produced a score of necessities. He 
slung hammocks from tree to tree, he canopied 
them with nettings; he built a fire and soon pro¬ 
duced a supper. 

The girl ate scantily, alone and in the shadows. 
Don Ramon proved a mighty trencherman and 
laughed through the meal, commending its cook 
as if nothing but kindness and respect had ever 
passed between them. Dan decided he was puzzled 
simply because he was in the presence of customs 
entirely new to his thoroughly North American mind. 

“No bread,” Don Ramon smiled to Dan. “We 
prefer millet in Domingo. But see these yams. 
You do not have green plantain in the United 
States, nor yet cassava roots.” He raised his eyes 
ecstatically. “Think of Christmas dinner without 
cassava pudding! And our coffee—your people 
possess no such coffee as ours.” His eyes an- 


IN THE DARK 


85 


swered the gleam of the camp fire, and he rubbed 
his hands. “So,” he breathed over a deftly rolled 
cigarette, “you will cure my friend Tucker?” 

“If we are in time,” Stone reminded him. 

“Of course—if we are in time. And who knows?” 
Ramon genially continued. “We may even acquire 
on my plantation a little of what you call yellow 
jack to keep you amused. We have many inter¬ 
esting diseases in Domingo—elephantiasis, fevers, 
the sleeping sickness, which I think is mostly 
feigned. Oh, you should have experience and to 
spare, when you leave us!” He rubbed his plump 
hands again. “When you leave us,” he repeated, 
then added as if reflectively: “A thousand nice, 
clean dollars a month—yes, yes. And accidents, 
too. There are unfortunately occasionally little ac¬ 
cidents where there is machinery.” 

He paused. Something sinister ran through all 
his joviality even as, with one fat palm upraised 
and its outspread fingers bright with jewels, he 
mirthfully requested better attention. 


“You hear that? No?” 


86 MONEY TO BURN 

Dan nodded. From far away there came the 
monotonous beating of a drum. 

“The papalois of blacks whose fathers crossed 
the hills from Haiti,” Villeta explained. “That is 
the first call to their rites of voodoo.” 

To the sound of this vesper summons, the 
travelers sought their hammocks; but sleep was 
tardy in its approach toward Dan. He thought 
over all the events that had led him to this dark 
resting place. Incidents of his earliest boyhood 
encroached on his consciousness, hand-in-hand walks 
with his father years ago. Pictures of school days 
and college days. His pursuit, along a narrow, 
straight path, of respected success among his fellow 
townsmen. He reviewed the horrors aboard the 
Hawk with their ultimate and fatal climax and 
asked himself how he could have curbed his anger, 
even if he had taken time to reflect. He lay again 
on the damp sands, rode again in the dangerously 
careening surrey, was once more in Don Jose’s 
coffeehouse looking down through the blinds at 
Don Ramon and his niece, and the stealthily trail¬ 
ing figure of Hoagland, the Hawk's passenger. 


IN THE DARK 


87 


He shuddered, but the shudder fled. Stone turned 
to the memory of a fallen mantilla and the soft 
gaze of frightened black eyes. The tropic moon 
rose, washing trees and vines in liquid emerald, 
and with it rose all the night sounds of the 
West Indian forest: the whistling frogs, barking 
as of wild dogs, the buzz of insects and a guttural 
chorus which reminded the tossing Stone of noth¬ 
ing so much as the cries of baboons heard on 
his single visit to the Bronx Zoo. 

When he did sleep, it was to waken with a start. 
Cold sweat was rolling into his wide eyes. He 
brushed it away. The bright moon was reenforced 
by the last glow of the fire. Directly above his 
head the mosquito netting bulged downward; some¬ 
thing that had not been there before—something 
like a tree limb from one of the trunks supporting 
his hammock. The limb swayed. 

It fell. Clammy and slimy and heavy it fell 
and, circling canopy and hammock, the thick coils 
of the snake wrapped Dan around and squeezed. 

A shriek rang out. Not his own; he saw, in 


88 


MONEY TO BURN 


a green streak of moonlight, the beautiful face 
of the girl distorted by terror. Dan had no chance 
to cry; he was struggling with all his imprisoned 
strength at the horror that encircled him. 

“Coming!” 

That was Ramon’s voice. The huge man flung 
himself upon the monster. The thing’s flat head 
darted up and gaped at him. With an exultant 
laugh, Villeta ripped that head from its bloody 
body. 

Dan slept no more, and all next day his un¬ 
refreshed physique was taxed by the party’s con¬ 
tinued penetration into the jungle. It was one 
long push through trees and bushes bound to¬ 
gether by wiry creepers under arches of lofty 
green. Orchids, now lovely and now repulsive, 
bloomed about them, jasmine odors fanned their 
sweating cheeks, stinging insects beclouded them 
and land crabs scuttled underfoot. Only the never- 
resting trade winds made it possible to endure. 

Not until the latest afternoon did they reach 
their journey’s end. They came upon a slatternly 
pueblo of adobe huts, toiled wearily along a more 


IN THE DARK 


89 


or less modern road and halted before a high stone 
wall covered with cracking cement. It was yellow 
and weedy, and it stretched to right and left until 
it disappeared in the renewed jungle. 

Ramon rode up to a thick, nail-studded door 
and jangled a hell. The door swung wide. Six 
half-clothed peons stood there, waiting to welcome 
their master. 

“We are home at last,” said Villeta. “Sehor 
Medico, consider all on my poor estate your own.” 

A strange arrival. No shouts from the servants; 
the only smile that upon Don Ramon’s round face. 
The half-savage peons drew aside while the caval¬ 
cade rode up a mile of neglected avenue. 

The great palacio appeared beyond a curve, on 
a hillock. It was a double balconied, rambling 
building of stone, partly new, but mostly very 
aged and colored a deep pink. It rose before them 
from behind a semicircular clearing, sprinkled, none 
too artistically, with sago palms, hedges of hibiscus, 
century plants and aloes. In a mar&h to their 
left, a grove of mangroves steeped their roots 
in dank water where mosquitoes bred, and, be- 


90 


MONEY TO BURN 


tween these and the house, Dan noticed, with 
strange interest, a deserted graveyard, its flat 
tombs askew and broken, its stones moss-covered 
and half hidden among rubber trees and melancholy 
vines. 

Something else, however, straightway caught his 
eyes. It was a crumbling chapel that leaned against 
one side of the older portion of the 'palacio, at¬ 
tached to the east wing and seeming, on second 
glance, to form part of the dwelling. He could 
see that it was, or had been, a perfect example 
of the ecclesiastical architecture of New Spain. En¬ 
thusiasm fired his voice. 

“That’s a fine thing. I must look that over one 
of these days.” 

Don Ramon turned sharply and then, under the 
fixed but noncommittal gaze of his niece, as sharply 
turned away. 

“Only an old chapel,” he said. For the first 
time he addressed Dan brusquely. “Interesting only 
to me, and to me only because my late wife’s 
ancestors lie buried in it or about it.” He glanced 
rapidly toward the girl and inclined his great head 


IN THE DARK 


91 


slightly. “My wife’s and, to be sure, my dear 
niece’s. Toussaint’s soldiers wrecked it when they 
drove the Spaniards out of all the island, and 
after the return, it was never repaired. The stone 
roof is dangerous. A pair of my inquisitive peons 
—my servants,” he quickly corrected, “were killed 
in the place as late as February. Therefore I 
have locked it up.” 

He eyed Dan again; he was smiling now, but 
now his smile was different. “Those prying 
servants; their death was one of the things I 
thought of when I spoke to you of accidents. You 
remember that I spoke to you of accidents last 
night?” 

Dan met that smile wonderingly. “Why, yes.” 

“Very good. I must ask you not to venture 
near the old chapel, Senor Medico.” 

And then into Dan’s mind there readvanced a 
question that had troubled him all the while he 
waited for Don Ramon at the coffeehouse of Jose 
Logrono in Sanchez—a question that only the diffi¬ 
culties and dangers of the subsequent journey 
had banished. 


92 


MONEY TO BURN 


“Why did this man offer such a salary to a 
third-year medical student, turned beach comber 
and wanted by the police? For a thousand a 
month I’ll bet he could have hired any two regular 
physicians in all Haiti and Santo Domingo!” 


CHAPTER VII 


FLYING STEEL 


r J" l HEY came to a long flight of wide pink steps, 
narrowing at the top, and to the palacio’s 
ancient doorway surmounted by a pure Spanish 
fanlight. While Dan made sure of the medicines 
that had been brought, two native servants, who 
looked like cattlemen, stepped from out of the 
shadows, their machetes thrust in belts made by 
twisting around their waists lariats that would 
easily support the weight of a man. The peons 
leaped toward the tired mules and, at a gesture 
from Don Ramon, who did not otherwise greet 
them, led the animals away in hroken-nosed Luis’ 
company. A mere word from her uncle, and the 
girl, with no phrase or glance of farewell, hurried 
through the open door and disappeared down a 
vaulted hallway. To Stone, Villeta repeated the 
Castilian form of welcome. 

“First of all,” said Dan, condemning himself 


94 


MONEY TO BURN 


for not having thought more of the sick man, and 
now thoroughly intent on the saving of life, I d 
like to see my patient.” 

“My dear fellow!” Villeta put his brown, jeweled 
hand gently on the young man’s shoulder. “You 
must have refreshment. You must bathe and rest! 
There is no such haste after a two day’s journey. 

“But I told you that he might be dead by now!” 

Don Ramon’s wide face shook in smiling dis¬ 
sent. “You were too occupied to hear? But no. 
It is your wholly excusable ignorance of Spanish. 
My servants say he is not dead—not even a little. 
And now”—he smiled deprecatingly as if at Stone s 
zea l—“this so-lucky patient must be made ready.” 

In the twilight of the corridor, Dan had been 
trying to ascertain whether his medicines were 
intact. 

“Not at all!” he exclaimed. His professional 
manner, though young, would brook little inter¬ 
ference; here he must be his own master. “The 
patient,” said he decisively, “needn’t be made 
ready for his doctor, nor, in the circumstances, 
need his doctor be made ready for the patient. I’ve 


FLYING STEEL 


95 


come a long way, and the man was very sick 
when I started. I wish to see him at once, if you 
please.” 

Ramon murmured protestingly. “Muy senor, 
mio -” 

From far down the hall a raucous scream in¬ 
terrupted him in the Domingan cry for help: 
“Socorro! Socorro! Socorro!” 

Something rushed through the dark air. A wing 
brushed Dan’s startled face, and then, by the 
light from the still opened door, he saw a green- 
and-yellow parrot settle on one of his host’s broad 
shoulders and begin to peck in a sort of insolent 
affection at Villeta’s swarthy cheek. 

“Do not be alarmed,” Don Ramon smiled. He 
put up a plump hand and stroked the bird with 
a kindness unmistakably genuine. “This is only 
my best friend, Pedro. Pedro, this is the good 
American doctor who is come to cure Senor 
Tucker.” And in Spanish he bade the bird speak 
to his guest and apologize for having startled him. 

Pedro cocked his head and glared at Dan with 
an evil eye. 



96 


MONEY TO BURN 


“Lo siento!” he squawked, hut, if he indeed knew 
what he was saying, his tone and expression belied 
the apology inherent in the words. 

Meanwhile, Yilleta appeared to have been using 
this diversion as a cover to reconsider Dan s in¬ 
dubitably fixed demand. The young doctor could 
not understand the hesitation. 

“So you must see your patient at once?” Yilleta 

repeated. 

“At once,” said Dan firmly. 

Don Ramon shrugged. “You American doctors!” 
he chaffed. “So impetuous! But I think the results 
of your impetuosity justify themselves. I have 
the utmost confidence in American doctors.” 

He had submitted. Dismissing Pedro, he led the 
way up broad stairs and then through long and 
echoing corridors. 

This portion of the building—obviously the old 
portion—seemed untenanted, and yet Dan had the 
sense of unseen presences. Once he thought he 
heard the patter of bare feet ahead, yet nobody 
was overtaken—nobody visible. Again his ear was 
caught by what sounded like a woman’s sob, but 


FLYING STEEL 


97 


neither Ramon’s niece nor any other woman came 
into view. So Villeta and his physician made a 
half dozen turns, past rooms apparently deserted, 
and came to a narrow stone staircase up which 
they climbed to the very top of the house. As 
they mounted, Villeta talked genially as always, 
hut in a voice that seemed gradually to rise and 
was, Dan somehow suspected, meant to carry a 
warning of their approach. 

They now gained another hall and here, at one 
closed door more, Villeta stopped. He spoke against 
the panel to some one behind it: 

“It is the master,” said he in Spanish. “I bring 
a strange doctor—not the Sanchez medico, but an 
American.” 

Was there the slightest sound from within? 
Dan could have sworn to one, yet when, after an 
instant’s unnecessary pause, they entered, he ob¬ 
served no occupant save the sick man. 

That one, in a bare apartment, under a high 
and narrow window, lay on a lofty old four-poster 
bed, tossing to and fro, his long fingers plucking 
at the sheet that covered him from feet to chin. 


98 


MONEY TO BURN 


His age was perhaps fifty-two or three, and the 
stiff hair of his head, as well as the stubble on 
his cheeks, was iron gray. In health he must 
have been one of those gaunt New Englanders 
of the Massachusetts coast whose families used 
to recruit the whaling trade; intolerant men and 
hard, but honest and brave, who see small help 
for themselves or anybody else in a future world, 
yet live in this one a life of rectitude. How fallen 
he might be from the estate of his forbears, there 
was now no telling; his face was purple, his eyes 
feverishly aglare, and his lips so stiffened as to 
emit only, at rare intervals, a low groan. 

“Unconscious?” asked Don Ramon. 

Dan lifted an eyelid. “Unconscious.” 

“But you can bring him around?” Villeta frown- 
ingly gnawed at his fingers. Now that he had 
admitted the physician, he seemed to be in the 
utmost haste. “The work is of such an importance 
and so immediate. If you can bring him around 
for one week only-•” 

Stone was busy with an examination. “If he 
gets well for a week, he gets well entirely. I 


FLYING STEEL 


99 


want hot water; there must be a counterirritant. 
Tumblers—spoons”—he looked about the all-but- 
empty room—“hot-water bottles, or cloths, if you’ve 
nothing better. I suppose there is no ice? And 
I must know just how this man has been kept 
alive so far, and why is there no one here to 
nurse him now?” 

“There is—or there just has been!” Don Ramon 
soothed. “I, too—I cannot understand the absence. 
The nurse must have stepped out for something.” 

“What has he been fed? I must have full de¬ 
tails.” There was about all this too much the 
look of neglect to suit Dan. If the patient was 
to be cured, there could be no longer any careless¬ 
ness or inattention. “A nurse must be in constant 
attendance!” 

“I am amazed that he left even for a moment,” 
said Don Ramon. He looked really perplexed, and 
Dan softened a little. 

“The fact is, Don Ramon,” said he, “that it is 
miraculous that this man is still alive. If he is 
to continue to live, I must have all the help I 
can get.” 



100 


MONEY TO BURN 


“You shall! You shall!” Villeta, one eye on 
the unconscious man, paced the somber room. 

He appeared to consider the advisability of con¬ 
fidences. Then, seeing nothing in Dan’s eager 
young face to dissuade him, he proceeded: 

“You thought, perhaps, that I seemed too much 
to realize the impossibility of great hurry at the 
start of our journey; now, having made the journey, 
you should understand that I was but facing facts 
like a philosopher, which I am. It required nearly 
two days to go to Sanchez and two to return. It 
may be I had other errands of equally vital im¬ 
portance. But those are completed. I should say, 
one of them is satisfactorily completed.” Don 
Ramon, still pacing the floor, looked the soul of 
honesty. “But now you are here. I tell you truly, 
Senor Josiah Tucker is more important to me at 
present than anything else—anybody else on my 
estate.” He looked anxiously at Dan, who all 
this time was attentively occupying himself with 
the man on the bed. “My dear fellow, do every¬ 
thing in your power to save him!” 

“Then have me sent at once the articles I called 


FLYING STEEL 


101 


for! Your—your servants”—he caught himself in 
time—“have you none that understands English?” 

Villeta’s eyelids flickered as if in self-question¬ 
ing. 

“No,” he said. “None save my personal servant, 
and he understands and speaks only incompletely. 
But you shall have his services whenever possible, 
and by all—all—your every gesture shall be 
obeyed.” He turned to the door. “I go now to 
have those articles brought to you. When you 
have done all for the time possible, inquire for the 
comedor —that is to say, the dining room, and do 
me the honor of joining me there for a poor supper.” 
He hesitated again. “Tucker is quite unconscious, 
is he not?” 

The ample planter’s bulk filled the doorway. He 
did not frown, but he seemed, in one final com¬ 
prehensive regard, to take note of the young doc¬ 
tor’s straight, youthful figure, his straight blue 
eyes and, above all, his almost bristlingly straight, 
tow-colored hair. Villeta’s right hand had in¬ 
voluntarily sought his white teeth in momentary 


102 


MONEY TO BURN 


hesitation, as the doctor corroborated his first ex¬ 
amination; then the hand lowered. 

“Yes,” Dan replied, “the patient is quite un¬ 
conscious.” 

Don Ramon gave a great sigh. He left the room. 

Only a few minutes later there came a knock 
at the door. Though Dan hurried to open it, he 
found no one there, and yet his orders had been 
wonderfully fulfilled. On the tiles of the passage 
stood everything of which he had need. 

Grumbling, however, at the lack of another’s 
presence, he set to work in the dual capacity of 
physician and nurse. Desperately he toiled over 
the man before him; the crisis was apparently 
passed. The fever must be slowly abating. The 
patient was nevertheless still a very ill man. How 
he had lived until now Stone could not divine. 
The fellow must possess in remarkable degree the 
resistance of both a good constitution and a strong 
will. However, it was now clear that, with proper 
care, he would continue to live, and that was the 
point of immediate import. 

Under his fellow countryman’s ministrations, 


FLYING STEEL 


103 


Tucker gradually entered another state. He began 
to move feebly; the glassiness left his eys, and he 
passed directly from complete unconsciousness to 
semidelirium. Incoherent phrases tumbled from 
his lips, now in Spanish, now in Yankee speech. 
Dan did not try to catch their meaning, nor, at 
first, would he have been able to, for they were 
barely mumbled. Then, all at once, they became 
distinct: 

“Ink—this won’t do. It won’t do! Ink, ink! 
I must have-” 

He half sat up. He laid hold of the physician’s 
muscular arm. 

“Yes, yes,” said Dan. A medical student true 
to type, he had the habit of most doctors and all 
nurses, who regard every sick man as either a 
baby or an idiot. “You shall have ink, and a pen, 
and paper, too—just as soon as you are a little 
better.” 

“Ah, paper!” This had been an unfortunate 
suggestion. It increased Tucker’s excitement. 
“That’s it. That’s what I was trying to think 
of! I can’t wait any longer. I must have it 



104 


MONEY TO BURN 


now.” The delicate fingers clutched at the air 
as if reaching for it. “Paper—paper—paper!’ 

Complete sentences followed, but now utterly un¬ 
intelligible. Stone explained to himself that his 
patient probably wanted to write home to wife 
or child, or else that an expected letter from the 
States had failed to arrive. Something, at all 
events, was increasing the sick man’s excitement 
to a dangerous degree; it was becoming intense 
to the point of complete delirium. He was tossing 
with such violence that, unaided, Dan must soon 
become incapable of holding him. 

There was a bell rope. Dan pulled it, but heard 
no answering jangle. He rushed to the door. He 
uttered a few useless imprecations. Just in time 
he held back a summons in Spanish. He wished 
he had never told that lie about his ignorance of 
the language, but now, in his strongest voice, he 
called in English for help. 

He dreaded to leave his patient, and yet he 
must have assistance. He ran a few paces down 
the hall; it was empty. Then, not daring to remain 
longer absent, he turned back. 


FLYING STEEL 


105 


The door had somehow closed behind him. As 
he reached for the knob, he was startled into mo¬ 
mentary inactivity by a new sound from within; 
it was the sound of a voice totally different from 
the New Englander’s. 

It was thin and high pitched; it was unmis¬ 
takably Domingan. With foul spurts of native 
dirtiness, it was shrieking in the island patois: 

“You rabbit fool that are food for the snake! 
You talk too much. I told you to hold your tongue 
before the doctor! I told you! By the Diamond 
of the Toad but now you shall pay!” 

It was the strangest sort of phraseology. Dan’s 
ears caught the general import of the words, but 
he could hardly credit his hearing. He flung wide 
the door—and then he could hardly credit his eyes. 

Like nothing human, like a black jungle cat, 
like a devil, a hideous form was kicking in the 
bed. It knelt right upon the patient’s chest, and 
its long yellow claws were digging deeper and 
deeper into the sick man’s throat. 

Dan leaped upon the creature and wrenched it 
off. With loathing hands and rising hair he tossed 


106 


MONEY TO BURN 


it, struggling and spitting, into the farthest corner 
—a dwarf hunchback with a twisted face. 

Panting from the exertion, the doctor turned to 
the patient, whose breath was stertorous. Then 
something warned him not to lose sight of the 
object in the corner, and he wheeled again. 

It was not a moment too soon. Across the room 
flew a vicious knife. He dodged just in time. The 
long blade buried itself a full two inches in the 
soft wood of the *wainscoting not half a foot from 
his heart. 


CHAPTER Vm 


A FIGHTING CHANGE 


T the same instant, Dan rushed the hunch¬ 



back, and the hunchback leaped at Dan. The 
impact was terrific, but its advantage lay all with 
the dwarf. He had jumped directly for the on¬ 
coming head; arms and legs tightened about Dan 
like the tentacles of an octopus, and fangs as if 
a dog snapped at his throat. The American, over¬ 
come by the speed and power of his opponent, 
staggered backward. Then heavy feet pounded on 
the flags of the corridor; Stone’s summons had 
been heard below. Don Ramon puffed into the 
room. 

“Que — que—que ?” 

He plucked the hunchback like a lizard from his 
perch and held him dangling by the collar of his 
ragged shirt. Pedro, the parrot, swaying lightly 
on his master’s shoulder, and by no means dislodged 
by that one’s effort, regarded the situation with 
malign interest. 


108 


MONEY TO BURN 


“Que—que—que?” he raucously repeated. 

“The patient was violent,” panted Dan, his sleeves 
having worked up to his elbows and the muscles 
of his forearms showing angrily firm. “I ran 
for help. This maniac must have been hiding under 
the bed. When I came back, he was strangling 
Tucker. I don’t know what he is or where else 
he can have come from, but will you kindly throw 
him out of this room?” 

He turned his back resolutely on the dwarf and, 
hurrying to the sick man, rapidly assured himself 
that the hacienda’s engineer was not desperately the 
worse. 

“Fernando Pena!” Villeta’s voice was that of 
a bull. He spoke to the hunchback in the same 
dialect as that used by the hunchback himself, 
but the physician’s ears, cocked to attention, missed 
nothing: “How often have I told you that it is 

important he should live?” 

Dan glanced over his shoulder. At Don Ramon’s 
feet the hunchback cringed, his talons, that had 
thrown the murderous knife, raised in trembling 
supplication. It was a frightfully distorted shape. 


A FIGHTING CHANCE 


109 


clad only in his shirt and abbreviated trousers. 
The eyes burned under shaggy brows; from one 
high cheek bone downward across the yellow face 
ran a tallowy scar that drew the mouth up in a 
crooked and perpetual grin. The American turned 
from the sight with renewed distaste. He re¬ 
gretted with all his heart that he had ever had to 
come to this mysterious and violent hacienda. Even 
capture might have been less repulsive. 

Resuming his ministrations, he heard the de¬ 
formed creature break into a torrent of pleading 
and defense. It was, in its unpunctuated velocity, 
a version of the island patois that, to be wholly 
understood, would have required Stone’s undivided 
attention, but he made out readily enough that 
Pena sought to justify his recent actions through 
some obscure fear, and woven into every second 
phrase was the shrill cry: 

“Tucker talks!—Tucker talks!—Tucker talks!” 

“He was only-” Dan had been about to 

repeat, in confutation, what the patient had said. 
When he had impulsively pretended his ignorance 
of Spanish, he merely regretted the necessity for 



110 


MONEY TO BURN 


the lie. Now, willy-nilly, he must hold to that 
lie as long as he remained under this roof. Some¬ 
thing—some undefined attitude on the part of the 
inhabitants, if nothing else—had driven him to the 
conclusion that any admission of a knowledge of 
Spanish would entail real danger. Villeta was, 
moreover, already in the act of translating glibly 
and falsely. 

“My personal servant,” he smiled apologetically, 
and his voice was soft and smooth again, “this 
Fernando Pena, says that Senor Tucker became 
violent and he, trying to hold him, was so attacked 
hy you—who of course misunderstood his intent— 
that he somewhat lost his temper. He is sorry. 

Dan had done his best for the patient. He gave 
Don Ramon his full face and made it as much 
a mask as he was able, in the circumstances, to do. 
As his clear blue eyes stared into the complacent 
features turned toward him, he decided it would 
be healthy to continue to assume the mask, how¬ 
ever difficult for his naturally telltale countenance. 

“I see,” he said, but his lips drew tight in spite 
of himself. The little matter of the knife had not 


A FIGHTING CHANCE 


111 


been mentioned. “Well, Tucker didn’t need any 
such excessive attention. It is unfortunate, be¬ 
sides, because it may retard if not actually prevent 
his recovery. He had excited himself by repeating 
certain words-” 

Don Ramon nibbled at his nails; he raised his 
brows. “What words? Do you recall them, Sehor 
Medico?” 

“Oh, it was just delirium. Something or other 
about paper and ink. I think he must have expected 
a letter, or else he probably wanted to write home 
about his illness.” 

Was there a quick intake of a breath? Dan 
glanced toward Tucker, but, though the sick man 
moved restlessly from side to side, he was breath¬ 
ing almost normally now. The huge planter and 
the gargoyle dwarf stood as still as statues. 

“Words of that sort from a man in this con¬ 
dition,” Dan continued, and he was glad he could 
make his voice sound professionally disinterested, 
“hardly ever mean much, though they sometimes 
indicate obsessions. Our main job now is to give 
Tucker rest and quiet, and not let this man of 



112 


MONEY TO BURN 


yours try any more stunts in what you call a mere 
fit of temper.” 

“There, there!” said Don Ramon, waving a per- 
suasive hand on which the jewels glittered. “It 
will all go well henceforth. Fernando will be 
more careful, I can assure you. He is perhaps 
a little excitable. The poor fellow’s temperament 
is tropical; it is no worse than that. There is no 
better husband on the island, no gentler 

“Husband!” Despite his medical studies, Dan 
shuddered at that mystery of the human heart which 
could win such a creature as Pena a wife. Stone 
was the last man willfully to hurt a deformed 
being by any exhibition of his horror for de¬ 
formity, and yet he involuntarily began to frame 
an impulsive query. “Do you mean to say 
“Fernando,” declared Don Ramon, “has a hand¬ 
some spouse living just beyond the village, and she 
is as fond of him as he is fond of her and good to 
her. Now do, please, tell me of your patient’s gen¬ 
eral condition. That is our vital concern—is it not 
so?” 


A FIGHTING CHANCE 


113 


“He can live if he’s given half a chance,” Dan 
grudgingly admitted. 

“He shall be given it; he shall be! And now,” 
said the planter soothingly, “why not administer 
him a draft to quiet him? Do, and let us all de¬ 
scend and sup. My own meal was interrupted, 
and I am famished. You say that my dear Tucker 
requires quiet; give it him. You can leave him 
safely now. I will send Luis to stay here and 
report to us any change. Come! We shall all feel 
more at peace with the world for eating.” 

The physician gave a final thoughtful survey of 
his patient. There was some truth in what Ramon 
said. Dan agreed to his suggestion. 

“And now,” said Villeta, softly rubbing satisfied 
palms together once he had got his way, “the 
quarrel will be healed. Fernando,” he ordered, 
“you will shake hands without delay with the Senor 
Medico. It is the custom of North America.” 

The hunchback slunk forward without protest 
and, in movement like a recalcitrant child who has 
agreed to kiss and make up, put out the long and 
bony hand that had so lately sought to kill the 


114 MONEY TO BURN 

man to whom it was now offered. The resemblance 
was only in movement; there was nothing of child¬ 
ish innocence in Fernando’s look. 

Villeta was facing Dan, so that Pena’s mal¬ 
formed hack was presented to him; he could not 
see his servant’s face, but Dan saw. Mingled with 
the fellow’s smile of repentance was an expression 
of concentrated malignity; it was with cold and 
evil-boding fingers that Stone returned the hand¬ 
clasp. 

Don Ramon led the way out and Dan followed. 
Over his shoulder he saw the hunchback dart to 
the wall, drag out the murderous knife and sheath 
it before leaving the room. As the American con¬ 
tinued on his way, he realized that nothing but 
the fear of arrest held him within the hacienda- 
nothing except that, and the still unexplained ap¬ 
peal he had caught from a girl’s limpid eyes. 

The dining room was a vast and shadowy apart¬ 
ment, lighted only by a single pair of candelabra 
on its big mahogany table. Two covers were laid, 
and one of these proclaimed Villeta’s recent inter¬ 
ruption. Dan’s mind again flew to the girl. 


A FIGHTING CHANGE 


115 


“The Senorita-” he began. 

“Eats always alone,” said Don Ramon. “It is a 
custom among the ladies of our country when 
there are strangers in the house.” 

Strangers! They had made that long journey 
together; she had slept last night in a hammock, 
not five yards from his own; her cry had saved 
his life. Dan mentally refuted Don Ramon’s defi¬ 
nition. 

It was true that Stone had not exchanged one 
audible word with her, that once only had he fully 
seen her face, that, with all her look of appeal, 
there had been something in that very glance which 
bade him retreat. Her voice—unless that muffled 
sob he had fancied on his first trip through the 
corridors was hers—he had heard only once, and 
then in an unrecognizable shriek of terrified warn¬ 
ing. Yet the warning had been for him alone, 
and she might have now been sitting at his side 
so completely did the thought of her dominate him. 
Present, she had impressed him deeply; absent, he 
found her more potent still. 

It was a giant’s meal: anguilas y queso rollado — 



116 


MONEY TO BURN 


eels and a grated cheese, very strong—a mixture of 
rice and beans, sweet potatoes and bananas. The 
flavor of garlic and the bite of pepper were not 
to Dan’s simpler taste, and the frying in olive oil 
was perhaps overrich, but of its style the cooking 
was notably good, and the wines had quite evidently 
been raised from a cellar musty and cobwebbed 
with age. Everything was suggestive of good liv¬ 
ing for the master, everything in sharp contrast 
to the ill-favored and dour retainers. 

Dan’s recent enemy, Pena, waited on the diners 
in a silence that was too soft-footed. Now he 
was at Don Roman’s elbow, now at Stone’s, ap¬ 
pearing like a jinni summoned from the shadows, 
changing as he altered his distance. Not once 
throughout Villeta’s jokes and chatter was Dan 
able to dispossess his mind of the hunchback’s 
proximity. Outwardly no one could have been 
more genially frank than the master of this house, 
with the brightly colored bird snatching titbits 
from between his teeth. Yet mystery of a far-from- 
alluring sort lurked in every dim corner of the 
palacio. 


A FIGHTING CHANGE 


117 


“You must take a look around my little estate 
in the morning.” Don Ramon smiled across the 
stretch of napery and candlelight. “It is something 
that must seem novel to North Americans.” 

Dan was about to make a polite response when 
he saw the face of Fernando Pena grinningly mir¬ 
rored in a silver plate before him. 

“The tropical fruits out there in my gardens,” 
Villeta lavishly ran on, “bananas, breadfruit, 
oranges, tangerines—you will be free to help your¬ 
self to them. Everything is yours.” 

Yet, in that instant, Fernando’s gnarled hand, 
moving around his master and placing a heaping 
dish of twice-roasted tortillas before him, reminded 
the American of how short a time ago it had at¬ 
tempted his life! 

“But the chapel you noticed,” Don Ramon con¬ 
tinued almost parenthetically, “that alone, as I 
have said, I must forbid you to enter. For some 
antiquary it might be a thing of beauty to be 
sure, but of a dangerous and deadly beauty, too. 
None can venture there safely, and so”—he pushed 
a large forkful of the tortillas between his pro- 


118 


MONEY TO BURN 


truding lips—“I have given explicit orders. I 
wish no more deaths on my hands.” 

“Too bad it’s in such poor condition,” commented 
Dan, intrigued into momentary enthusiasm by the 
mention of the crumbling edifice. “Now, archi¬ 
tecturally it is-” 

He was startled into silence by a drop of hot 
coffee which was spilled on his wrist. Pena again! 

“Yes, yes. One day I shall have it restored, but 

until then-” Don Ramon sighed and closed 

the subject abruptly. He launched forth on a 
dissertation of the countryside’s flowers and the high 
coloring of its birds. 

At last the long meal concluded. Villeta, clap¬ 
ping his fleshy hands, addressed his servant, or¬ 
dered him to conduct Dan to his bedchamber, and 
himself hade the American an elaborate good night. 
It had been an unpardonable discourtesy, he de¬ 
clared, to keep his guest up so late when he must 
be so weary. 

The guest, however, could have wished for an¬ 
other guide, though the hunchback’s manner had 
completely altered with new orders. He was servile 



A FIGHTING CHANGE 


119 


and smiling as, his grotesque form partly lighted 
by the candle he bore high above his head—an 
apish shadow of it cast on the paving—he led the 
way upstairs. 

“I’ll give my patient a bedtime visit first,” said 
Dan. 

It annoyed him that he dared not address the 
hunchback directly in Spanish when the man had 
such an imperfect knowledge of Stone’s native 
tongue, but he managed to make his desire clear. 
His guide silently reversed their course. Luis was 
in the sick room when they entered it; the Carib 
gloomily reported no change. 

Arrived at Tucker’s side, however, Dan saw that 
delirium and fever had both disappeared. He spoke 
to the patient in a cheery American voice, remarked 
that the gray stubble of his beard might even 
be shaved off in the morning and suggested, as a 
spur to renewed interest in things mundane, an 
increasingly tempting diet. At first, only Tucker’s 
eyes answered. Dan leaned over the bed to time 
the pulse and then realized that Tucker was trying 
to whisper something. 


120 MONEY TO BURN 

Could the delirium be returning? Stone leaned 
closer. The whispering ceased. 

He moved just a little aside. Pena was peering, 
under his arm, straight into the patient’s eyes. 

There was no use in protest now. Pretending 
to have noticed nothing and postponing action of 
any sort in the matter until the morrow, Dan bade 
Tucker good night. He promised to call early in 
the morning and nodded to the patient a reassur¬ 
ance that he himself unaccountably doubted. Then 
he almost unwillingly gave Fernando instructions 
as to the medicines he left, listening while they were 
translated—accurately—to Luis for fulfillment. 

Again following the grotesque hunchback and 
the flickering candle, Dan descended the staircase 
and passed through corridor after twisting corridor. 
They started to mount again. 

“Look here,” he objected, “I ought to he nearer 
Senor Tucker. Suppose I was needed quickly. 
Why, I couldn’t even find my way!” 

“Master order.” Pena continued imperturbably 


onward. 


A FIGHTING CHANCE 


121 


Finally he stopped before a thick door, which 
he pushed slowly open. 

“Here Senor Medico room,” said he. 

It was a large chamber, heavily curtained in 
spite of its tropical setting. Pena pointed out, in 
the long yellowish shadows cast by the candle, its 
canopied four-poster bed, in one gloomy corner; 
the tall mahogany wardrobe appearing actually short 
beneath the high ceiling; the highboy, the wash- 
stand, the two closely shuttered windows. There 
was no bell. 

“Bring anything?” grinned the servant. 

Dan hated that grin. “Not to-night, thank you. 
But I’ll want shaving water in the morning.” 

“At eight, Senor Medico?” 

“Better make it seven thirty. But no, on second 
thought, I’ll call for it.” 

“As Senor Medico wish.” The hunchback lighted 
a bedroom candle and, bowing derisively in the 
shadows, backed obsequiously away. 

Alone, Dan looked the great apartment over. He 
walked to a window and, pushing wide its shutter, 
gazed out at a night heavy with luminous stars. 


122 


MONEY TO BURN 


In opening that barricade he had loosed the full 
sound of jungle cries and whistlings, the yammer¬ 
ing of farm dogs, the languorous scents of the 
tropical dark. Leaning far over the sill, tracing 
the uneven outline of the palacio, he could just 
discern the shape of the forbidden chapel at the 
farther extremity. 

His imagination was free at last. Specters might 
tread the corridors of this strange mansion, but he 
was no longer haunted by them. He was even too 
tired to care about them. Instead, he let his mind 
turn to the lovely face which haunted him far 
more agreeably. He wondered where the girl slept; 
be wondered, too, if she slept. Somehow his heart 
ached for her in a curious pity. 

He noted that his room, like his patient’s, was 
high up in the building and that there was a sheer 
drop of fifty feet to the ground. 

Weariness overcame him. He prepared for bed 
and climbed in. There was no use in brooding 
now over the past or the present; sleep was ready 
on his pillow. 

From it, he wakened to an odd, regular, beating 


A FIGHTING CHANGE 


123 


sound. The night was at its blackest, but the 
sound was that of reiterant motion, the unmis¬ 
takable working of machinery. Turning over lazily, 
he told himself that this was doubtless the effect 
of that pressing order of which Ramon had spoken. 

Dan did not waken again until the full glare 
of the morning, when the chatter of innumerable 
birds made him sit bolt upright. It was only a 
few minutes after six, but the tropics were broad 
awake. 

Out of the window he had opened the night be¬ 
fore, he looked now—standing in his bare feet— 
on a scene of wild beauty. He could see, under 
the blue dome of the sky, a complete semicircle 
of the walled estate; here some small grazing fields 
for cattle, there woodland or acres of tobacco, and 
all about the house, just beyond the palm-sprinkled 
patio, the untidy banana trees—fields and fields of 
them. 

Recollection of Yilleta’s easy explanation of his 
kind of estate assailed him. He was perplexed. 
With painstaking eyes he studied the landscape 
again, cacao trees, coconuts, patches of what looked 


124 


MONEY TO BURN 


like melons, the mangroves steeping their roots 
in the graveyard swamp. Everything belonging to 
the tropics seemed to grow within the heterogeneous 
hacienda, everything, that is, but sugar cane. 

Well, a man must shave, anyhow. Stone gave an 
eager moment to study of the exquisite but danger¬ 
ous chapel. Then, still in his bare feet, he crossed 
the room to call for water. 

As he drew the knob swiftly inward, the de¬ 
formed figure of Fernando Pena toppled into the 


room. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE HUNCHBACK’S EYES 

JpACE to face with the unexpected physical action 
is man’s first impulse; the art of attack and 
defense is merely the highly specialized expression 
of a primal instinct, and the Yorkshireman’s phil¬ 
osophy is of primitive soundness: “A word and a 
blow, but the blow first.” Dan’s arm was quicker 
than his tongue, but he drew it back just before 
striking. 

“What are you aoing at my door?” he de¬ 
manded. 

Intense malignity had been again written on the 
dwarf’s face in the instant of falling into the bed¬ 
room; now his expression became servile. His eyes 
were dull and humble as he answered: 

“Senor Medico wake up. Fernando Pena hear 
him move. Come to ask if shaving water.” 

“I said I’d call.” 

“Senor Medico want shaving water?” 

“I’ll shave after a while. Were you outside this 
door all night?” 


126 MONEY TO BURN 

“But no—but no!” Pena shook his head in honest 
denial. “Not when Senor Medico sleep.” 

“So I don’t need to be watched when I’m asleep? 
Well, there’s some comfort in that. I’ll go and see 
my patient as soon as I can jump into a few clothes. 
Can you tell me what sort of night he had?” 

The hunchback seemed well informed of the do¬ 
ings of the house. He did not hesitate to admit and 
impart his knowledge of the patient. “Senor Tucker 
toss. He toss, but he not dead yet.” 

“I see.” Dan scrutinized the man. There was 
plainly no particular desire in the fellow’s mind 
that Tucker should live, though his devotion to his 
master would probably henceforth keep his temper 
in place. It was, Dan reflected, a dangerous sort of 
temper to maintain at too close quarters. 

All through the devious passageways he watched 
for means of identifying the route. He did not wish 
this spying attendance. Another time, he thought, 
he might be able to find the patient without aid, 
although he was certain that once Pena doubled in 
order to befog him. What might possibly be the 
purpose of this circuitous procedure Dan did not 


THE HUNCHBACK’S EYES 


127 


then attempt to guess. It was enough that they 
reached the sick chamber at last. 

Tucker, in his high bed, was now deserted by 
Luis. He seemed destined to be deserted by his 
nurses, but pain also had clearly left him. He was 
thin, Dan noted, not altogether from the severity of 
illness, and his cheek bones stood out high and nar¬ 
row; his chin was pointed and his lips atremble. 
The mouth Dan called either weak or sullen, or 
both; and the eyes, of an unblinking pale gray, were 
not prepossessing. These things and one more, 
showing plain now in the glare of tropic day; out¬ 
side the sheet lay two white inert hands, the tips 
of all except the little fingers somewhat stained, 
but the hands themselves delicate and slim. They 
were not the sort one would expect in a mechanical 
engineer on a sugar estate, and yet they were hands 
that obviously were constantly used, and with skill. 

“How are you feeling this morning, Mr. Tucker?” 

Dan smiled with professional cheerfulness, which, 
however, did not altogether succeed in concealing 
his extreme youth. Somehow, he could not feel 
wholly sympathetic toward this man; but Tucker 


128 


MONEY TO BURN 


was ill and neglected, and Stone meant to do his 
duty in any event and acquit himself honorably of 
his debt to his employer. 

The man nodded slightly. It was as if he could 
not or dared not speak. The doctor bustled among 
his medicines, where Pena was beside him with 
ostentatious help. 

Then, with the quick resolve of meeting guile 
with guile, Dan addressed the servant. “Fernando,” 
said he, peering into a pitcher, “this water is full of 
ants. Run downstairs and get me some fresh.” 

To his amazement, the dwarf stared up dully but 
steadily—in refusal. “No.” 

They looked full at each other in a moment’s 
contest of wills. If Dan could not overcome the 
servant’s antipathy to him, he must take a final 
course. Pena was too important a member of the 
household for him not to realize that, and, however 
much Don Ramon might order him to be friendly, 
the hunchback would remain lord of his own sen¬ 
timents. He appeared to be lord of his own actions 
as well. 


THE HUNCHBACK’S EYES 


129 


“If you don’t follow the doctor’s orders,” said Dan 
slowly, “this man may die. Shall I tell Don Ramon 
that that’s what you want?” 

Fernando spat. 

Dan’s anger rose. “You bring me the fresh 
water—at once—or I will throw up the case.” 

“I go! I go!” Pena had acknowledged mo¬ 
mentary loss, but it was not Dan; it was only the 
dwarf’s fear of displeasing Ramon that had con¬ 
quered him. 

Dan watched him, shaking his shaggy head and 
mumbling all the length of the room, make the turn 
at the door—waited until the soft footfalls no longer 
sounded, then hurried back to his patient and leaned 
over him. 

“Now,” said he, “quick—tell me what you were 
trying to say last night.” 

Tucker’s weak eyes were pathetic, but traveled 
doubtfully from the doctor toward the doorway, 
which, however, was hidden by the high foot of 
his bed. 

“Don’t worry. He’s gone.” Dan hastened to give 


reassurance. 


130 


MONEY TO BURN 


But, either from fear or prudence, the sick man, 
now gazing fixedly at the ceiling, would utter no 
sound. His lips began to shape themselves into 
unvocalized words. Dan watched, puzzled. Not the 
least whisper came, and he could rely on his sight 
alone for interpretation. It was only after consid¬ 
erable repetition that he made out, bit by bit: 

“They want to get rid of me, but they daren’t 
do it just yet. They need me a little longer. Look 
out for yourself, doctor. I can see you’re not one 
of them, but”—here the patient’s face showed the 
distress of desperation—“for God’s sake get me 
away! I made only one mistake. I put out only 
one of our printings. That paper maker; he needed 
money—and I gave him—but what does that matter? 
Get me away! Get me away!” 

There was no delirium here, however mystifying 
the phrases. At last the younger man’s sympathy 
was aroused. He heard himself thoughtlessly reply 
in spoken words. 

“Of all the damnable-•” 

“The fresh water, senor.” 

The servile tones were at his very elbow. The 


THE HUNCHBACK’S EYES 


134 


hunchback stood there, his thick lips grinning, his 
manner deliberately obsequious, as he proffered an¬ 
other pitcher. 

Dan seized it. He looked down into the dull eyes 
of the servant, which, though telling nothing, never¬ 
theless always held a challenge. 

“Pitcher little way down hall, senor,” said Pena. 
“Luis maybe fill him. He all ready in hall. No ants 
now—nice, fresh water.” 

Dan glanced quickly back toward the bed. Josiah 
Tucker had closed his eyes. Beneath an excessive 
pallor he looked exhausted and hopeless. But 
Pena’s expression as Dan turned back was one of 
rage fighting against crafty repression. 

How much had the hunchback observed? He 
was just tall enough to see the moving mouth. Had 
he arrived only when Dan spoke aloud, or had he 
been silently standing there—concealed by Stone’s 
back, peeping beneath his elbow—during the diffi¬ 
cult moments of translation? And, in the latter 
case, had he, too, been able to read the lips of the 
helpless Tucker, or, merely attending, had he cor¬ 
rectly guessed their import? 


CHAPTER X 


TWO MILLION DOLLARS 

QILENT and doubtful, Dan concluded his early- 
morning duties to his patient, and was con¬ 
ducted back to his vast bedchamber. He prepared 
for breakfast. Fernando kept disconcertingly close 
while he finished dressing. 

“Hot water, Senor Medico? Your socks here, 
Senor Medico! Here Senor Medico coat; Pena too 
small to help on.” 

The creature tried Stone’s nerves almost beyond 
endurance. If Dan did not see him directly, he 
was forever catching his distorted reflection in a 
long mirror at the end of the room. 

Mystery breathed through the entire hacienda. 
The forsaken graveyard, half buried in marsh, 
seemed alive with it, the very stones of the chapel 
whispered of it. There had been danger and to 
spare on the water front of San Lorenzo, but the 
danger of the gallows seemed, because it was more 


TWO MILLION DOLLARS 


133 


tangible, almost less ominous than the secret perils 
of this house of empty passageways, set within the 
strange walled estate and guarded by peons—that 
was the right name for them!—who were equally 
terrified and terrifying. 

And then there was that girl. Was it merely 
shyness, as he had at first supposed, that made her 
footsteps lag on the sands where he originally saw 
her? What had she been doing in San Lorenzo 
with an uncle who did not let her share his table 
when strangers were about, and who held her arm 
securely when she walked in public? Was he pro¬ 
tecting her against invisible harms, and did she 
live in some impending danger that made her prefer 
this protection? Dan wished he had managed to 
talk with her and find out her trouble. Perhaps 
when Don Ramon came to trust him more, the 
planter would confide in him. Perhaps the trouble 
hung over the pair of them, and Villeta only sim¬ 
ulated his cheerfulness. 

And the sick man, Tucker. Save a fellow Amer¬ 
ican? Of course. But from what? From the 
same danger, it was to be guessed, that threatened 


134 


MONEY TO BURN 


the others. If so, Stone could find out just what 
it was—find out from his patient—on his next pro¬ 
fessional visit. After that, rescue—rescue if pos¬ 
sible, for who was Dan, himself a fugitive, to be 
of any genuine help to anybody desirous of escape? 

He descended to the ground floor gloomily, yet 
there the bright morning sunlight temporarily, at 
least, dispersed some portion of his dejection. Don 
Ramon, resplendent in fresh white, was waiting 
here, his vivid parrot, Pedro, seated on his shoulder 
and, reaching a gray bill forward, pecking at the 
full lips under his master’s mustache. 

The breakfast table was laden with bowls of gay 
flowers and torrid-zone fruits. Steaming coffee was 
brewing in a brass alcohol-heated percolator, and 
Don Ramon—who was dressed for a journey in 
spite of the color of his raiment—at once hurried 
forward to greet his guest. 

His manner was the most radiant in the world. 
It gave every appearance of being spontaneous and 
inherent. He scattered good health and good na¬ 
ture, and waved Dan, with a genial smile and the 


TWO MILLION DOLLARS 


135 


flash of his never-absent rings, to his seat at the 
table. 

“You slept soundly? Yes?” 

“Thank you,” said Dan. He thought again of the 
machinery heard at night; then, glancing at his host, 
wondered if his own doubts were not the morbid 
results of his experiences aboard the Hawk. “And 
you?” he asked. 

“I never sleep badly. That is what it is,” said 
Don Ramon, “to have the clear conscience of a 
babe.” 

“And the”—Dan hesitated ever so little and knew 
that he blushed a great deal, but he brought it out 
with a sort of dogged determination—“and the 
senorita, your niece? She enjoyed a good rest, 
too?” 

“My good friend, what could there be upon the 
conscience of a properly brought-up young girl? 
Tell me of your patient.” 

Dan had something to say about that, but the 
moment when Pena reached up a plate to him 
seemed not particularly auspicious. He reported in 
general terms. v 


136 


MONEY TO BURN 


Excused from the sick room, Luis assisted the 
hunchback this morning, the doctor anxiously won¬ 
dering if his patient now had any attendant at all. 
Nevertheless, Dan settled himself with no outward 
sign of protest—and with a thoroughly normal 
appetite—to eating. The breakfast was, unlike the 
breakfast of most Continentals and those of Conti¬ 
nental origin, an elaborate affair. Rashers of bacon, 
broiled fish, eggs baked with green and red pep¬ 
pers, heaps of sweet tortillas as on the night before. 
There was nothing wrong with the appetite of the 
master of the house. Don Ramon’s mouth was al¬ 
ways open for more, though, between tossings of 
food to the greedy parrot swaying on the table be¬ 
side his plate, he talked as volubly as ever. 

“I regret excessively that I must leave you to 
your own devices to-day,” he said in his soft voice, 
with a polite bow and a smile that lighted his big 
round face. 

“Socorro! Socorro!” squawked Pedro, and Dan 
looked up as the bird interrupted, with startled blue 
eyes. 

“But,” continued his master, stroking the parrot. 


TWO MILLION DOLLARS 


137 


“when you are not completing the cure of our 
unfortunate Senor Tucker, you may look about the 
estate or read. I have quantities of books—English; 
among the collection many American novels of the 
sort that one of your several societies formed to 
suppress something or other, has succeeded in sup¬ 
pressing, so that you may not have seen them. You 
would like to look them over? Mostly, they are very 
stupid and mostly they are poorly written. When 
a hook is stupid and poorly written, those quaint 
societies seem to think it is also evil, and I am in¬ 
clined to believe they are right.” 

Dan was not sure that he cared for these volumes. 

“Well, amuse yourself, at any rate. It is some 
distance I must go to meet some freight that I ex¬ 
pect to be conveyed from San Lorenzo. I must 
meet it part way, at a transfer. Regresare a las 
siete —I beg }mur pardon. I shall return at seven 
or thereabouts. I shall he happy to receive a good 
report of Senor Tucker this evening.” 

Dan, his patient heavily on his mind, tried to 
find a moment unsupervised by Pena, but, time 
pressing and the master of the palacio being on the 


138 


MONEY TO BURN 


very point of leaving, he was finally forced to speak, 
if at all, before the hunchback. 

“Don Ramon,” said he, “there’s a favor I want 
you to do for me.” 

Whether from something in Dan’s tone or for 
reasons better known to himself alone, Villeta’s eyes 
narrowed, but his smile was in his final answer. 

“A favor? Whatever it may be, rest assured that 
it is granted!” 

Dan was by no means sure of that. “I had 
hoped,” he said, “to have a chance to speak of it to 
you in private-” 

“Well? Well?” 

Villeta seemed restless for elucidation. His al¬ 
ready closely bitten finger nails were being impa¬ 
tiently nibbled toward the quick. Dan, who had 
previously observed this only as a sort of mark 
of identification, found himself now codifying the 
habit as a nervous affection subtly correlative of 
the mystery of the house. 

“You want Tucker back at his work as soon as 
possible, don’t you?” he nevertheless continued. 

“Of a truth, yes!” 



TWO MILLION DOLLARS 


139 


Pena hovered over them. He was unconcealedly 
listening. 

“Well, my patient,” Dan continued, “is being re¬ 
tarded in his recovery by a sick man’s hallucination. 
He has a foolish fear of Fernando, this servant of 
young man’s arm. “My dear fellow,” said he, “I 
relieved of that attendance, I frankly can’t guarantee 
recovery.” 

Stone felt rather than saw the dark look that 
swept over the dwarf’s features, but Don Ramon 
burst into a great boisterous laugh and, while the 
parrot raucously echoed him, tapped Stone’s arm 
with his fat jeweled fingers. 

“My dear Senor Medico, this is very foolish! You 
as a physician, however immature—I beg your par¬ 
don—should not hold my poor servant’s misfortune 
against him.” 

“I don’t! I am speaking for my patient.” The 
American felt his face unaccountably flushing. 

“But Senor Tucker understands the temperament 
of my innocent Fernando.” 

“Sick men have violent fancies, Don Ramon,” Dan 
insisted. 


140 


MONEY TO BURN 


“Then,” said Ramon with a sudden sharpness, 
“when they are nonsense they should be overcome, 
or they may grow to mania. There is altogether 
too much of this yielding to sick men’s sick fancies 
by silly, abnormally sympathetic physicians. Pah! 
One would think their medical training would 
harden them, but I believe they’re all as soft as 
Pena’s wife or as this overripe mango.” He care¬ 
lessly spat the yellow pulp from his mouth. Then 
he leaned confidentially toward Dan and jogged the 
young man’s arm. “My dear fellow,” said he, “I 
really had more faith in an American doctor—even 
in one of your record. Why, ask Senora Pena— 
she will tell you that Fernando is as harmless as a 
lamb.” 

“Perhaps.” Dan was determined not to let his 
own personal predicament influence his professional 
obligations. “But I myself don’t like his constant 
companionship. It’s quite unnecessary, and it’s 
got nothing to do with his misfortune. I simply 
can’t have anybody— anybody —dogging my heels 
the way this man does. I’ve never had a valet de 
chambre to wash my face and brush my teeth for 


TWO MILLION DOLLARS 


141 


me, and I don’t need one now. What’s more, I 
won’t stand for it.” 

His tone was incisive, his purpose firm. After 
the peon’s impudence in the sick chamber and Tuck¬ 
er’s appeal for rescue, he was resolved to be rid of 
Fernando at all hazards. Villeta’s swift glance read 
the decision, and the planter shrugged and sub¬ 
mitted. Out of one corner of his mouth, “De nada» 
no es nada,” he whispered to Pena, but the next in¬ 
stant he addressed Dan: 

“Of course if the matter is personal to you, 
why, you are my guest and you shall have your 
wish. Did I not tell you, before you expressed it, 
that your wish should be granted?” He turned 
back to the brooding Pena, but now he spoke in 
English and no longer in a whisper: 

“You hear the Senor Medico! If Senor Tucker 
cannot recover with you in attendance, you must 
completely surrender your position to Luis. Luis 
will therefore attend to both the sick American 
and the well American, and will do no more duties 
in the dining room for the present. “But”—and he 
faced Dan again—“you will have to transmit all 


142 


MONEY TO BURN 


orders through Fernando, because Luis knows no 
English.” Over his shoulder, Don Ramon ascer¬ 
tained that the broken-nosed Carib had left the 
room. He added softly to Fernando, with a leer 
that Dan’s sharpened eyes did not miss: “No durara 
rrmcho .” 

There was nothing much in that of itself: “It will 
not last long.” But Pena’s reply was more explicit 
and seemed to involve his master as well as himself 
in its implications. 

He, too, made certain that Luis was still absent. 
Then he burst forth in a torrent of Spanish that he 
never dreamed the American would understand: 

“This is all a trick, my master. Watch these 
Americanos. We have enough! Why go to so 
much pains to get him well for a week? Muerte al 
traidor! Let me kill the sick man now!” 

“Plenty of time for that!” said the planter pla- 
catingly. His smile never deserted him, and his 
voice was as soft as if he were speaking to a 
querulous child. 

Dan bent his head low above his plate in order 
to hide the growing horror of his face. He could 


TWO MILLION DOLLARS 


143 


not believe what he heard. But Ramon added em¬ 
phatically and still in Spanish to the dwarf: “The 
extra paper comes to-day. Why stop short of our 
two million dollars?” 

The parrot Pedro had hopped to one of the 
planter’s shoulders, its bright-green head impudently 
on one side. 

“Muerte al traidor! Muerte al traidor!” it 
shrieked and, shrieking, glared with horrible in¬ 
nuendo at the young American. 


CHAPTER XI 


FOOTSTEPS 

PLAN’S face, as he finally raised it, was impassive, 
^ hut he had been enabled to paint impassivity 
there only because of the danger that dangled, he 
now felt sure, everywhere about him. The hacienda 
was haunted, but most of its ghosts were alive, and 
the worst of them all was some evil purpose. Of 
that one, the patient upstairs lay in desperate fear; 
it terrorized the lower servants. The hunchback 
was driven to ungovernable actions on its account; 
even Don Ramon scrawled his knowledge of it 
across the walls of his daily life. What—for she 
could not be guilty of a part in it—what was it do¬ 
ing to the vanished girl? 

Dan meant to act, but before he acted he would 
put one question to the planter. Meanwhile, and 
before interruption was possible, Don Ramon, elab¬ 
orately jocular and smilingly mendacious, pretended 
to translate the hunchback’s remarks. 


FOOTSTEPS 


145 


“Fernando is so sensitive,” Villeta apologized. 
“He has an intricate and delicate soul—oh, in spite 
of his poor distorted shape!—and though he wishes, 
as he says, to oblige the Senor Medico, he so ap¬ 
preciated the honor of his position as guardian angel 
to our poor patient that you have much hurt his 
feelings!” 

Pena, with a glare at this translation, the gist of 
which he plainly understood, left the room. He 
sent Luis, the broken-nosed Indian, back in his 
stead. 

“But,” continued Don Ramon, thumping his chest 
and marking the transfer of servants merely with a 
lowering of his eyelids, “I—I alone am master in 
my hacienda. My orders shall he obeyed. Any¬ 
thing for the good of my workingmen. That is my 
motto!” 

His broad white teeth showed in a radiant smile. 
Dan wanted to hit him, hut all he said was: 

“I see. And, by the way, where do you grow your 
sugar cane, sir?” 

Ramon regarded him through quickly narrowed 
lids. “Ah,” said he, “you know sugar cane? And 


146 MONEY TO BURN 

you have already, so early, been exploring my. 

estate?” 

Dan ignored the first question. “No, he an¬ 
swered. “I haven’t been exploring your estate, but 
I happened to look out of my window this morn¬ 
ing, and I couldn’t see any cane. It’s your main 
product; I wondered where you kept it.” 

Don Ramon’s parrot seemed to catch and hold 
Stone’s eye. It stared unblinkingly at the American, 
with a glassy vindictiveness that could not be 
doubted. Dan wondered if, by some obscure sym¬ 
pathy, the bird reflected his master’s feelings. There 
appeared to be an odd understanding between the 
pair; almost, there was a threat in Pedro’s beady 
gaze. With a slight tremor, Stone looked from the 
brilliantly feathered creature to its master. 

Villeta’s head bent above his parrot now as he 
stroked its plumage. The voice in which he replied 
to his vis-a-vis was suave and unsuspicious. “You 
would hardly be able to see the cane from your 
window, my friend. We grow it on an outlying 
farm.” 

“Rut your work”—Dan wavered between doubt 


FOOTSTEPS 


147 


and belief; he was determined to pin the man 
down—“that is here, isn’t it, Don Ramon? The 
mechanical part of it?” 

“How so, my friend?” 

The young doctor raised a puzzled face. “Well,” 
said he, “last night I was sure I heard machinery.” 

Villeta leaned forward over the table, pushing a 
bowl of goldfish from between him and Dan. 

“I must sooner or later explain a small matter,’ 5 
said he in his honeyed and most confidential tone. 
“My business is a little—well, secret.” 

Dan said to himself: “Now we are getting down 
to cases.” 

“To speak frankly,” the planter softly elaborated, 
“the Santo Domingan government places an ex¬ 
orbitant export duty on my product, so that I find 
it expedient to minimize, for my reports to them, 
its quantity. Add to this the import duty in the 
United States, and without some petty subterfuge I 
simply could not compete. I should be a ruined 
man.” He spread out his fat hands as if in help¬ 
lessness. Pedro sympathetically cocked his head 
and blinked into space. “Bootlegging is perhaps of 


148 


MONEY TO BURN 


the same general nature, though what your country¬ 
men call low grade—quite low grade. I must con¬ 
fess it is more profitable and, like all laws made 
by the powerful few, morally illegal. Personally, I 
am above such practice, however, just as I should 
not risk my excellent digestion with your famous 
‘home brew.’ Legitimate business is another matter. 
The United States has no power to keep me from 
earning a reasonable living.” He smiled sar¬ 
donically, and his thick eyebrows lifted. “So, truly, 
but between ourselves, I may say that I am practic¬ 
ing a little deception—innocent in my mind, I as¬ 
sure you!—on the government. As you North Amer¬ 
icans would so picturesquely put it, you—get me?” 

Dan thought he did. 

“Good! Like a genuine host I place my innermost 
secrets in your hands. Now,” said he, as he depos¬ 
ited the golden remnant of fruit on his plate, dipped 
his fingers into a bowl of water, and proceeded to 
pick his teeth, “I wish to acknowledge with fitting 
generosity my appreciation of your services. There 
is no doubt in my mind. You are”—and he smiled 


“saving Senor Tucker’s life.” 


FOOTSTEPS 


149 


The parrot gave a loud squawk of disbelief. The 
abstracted Don Ramon stroked it soothingly. 

“That,” he declared, “is just now of paramount 
importance to me. If you can put him into working 
condition by the day after to-morrow—you seem to 
work miracles—there is no need for you to stay 
the month. I shall, indeed, pay you double the 
price I first mentioned in recognition of the cure. 
Meanwhile”—he beamed with his own lavishness— 
“I mean to pay you one thousand dollars right 
away.” 

The man seemed determined to placate him. Sit¬ 
ting perfectly still at the breakfast table, Dan 
watched Don Ramon, with Pedro perched securely 
on a shoulder, hurry from the room; he listened to 
his footsteps along the empty corridors. Idly at 
first he counted, all the time resolved somehow to 
he loyal to his patient, though loyalty to the master 
was no longer to be considered. He would save 
Tucker not only from disease, but from death— 
aye, and murder, too, however long he might have 
to stay in this dangerous house. Yes, and because 
she also must somehow want saving and must 


150 


MONEY TO BURN 


certainly deserve it, lie would contrive to save that 
girl as well! His mind went back to her like steel 
to a magnet, but throughout all this process, he 
subconsciously continued to count the echoing steps 
of his host. 

Subconsciously at first; then with a purposeful 
deliberation. The steps ascended a staircase to the 
left; there were then ten staccato footfalls and the 
sound of a door that opened on hinges hungry 
for oil. 

Broken-nosed Luis was slowly removing the 
plates. Dan, desperately seeking an ally, smiled at 
him a little, but secured no response. The Indian 
was stolidly, but by no means swiftly, bent on his 
work. 

Stone continued to listen, now with strained ears. 
Just then that unoiled door above was again opened 
and closed. Ten footsteps followed, the stairs were 
descended, the length of the corridor traversed. 
Don Ramon reentered the dining room. 

With a flourish he gave to Dan what he carried, 
ten brand-new hundred-dollar bills. 

“Behold!” said he and struck an attitude of phil- 


FOOTSTEPS 


151 


anthropy. Pedro, always clinging to his shoulder, 
echoed it. 

Dan took the money. It was, however, early in 
delivery, a bargained payment. 

“Thanks.” He somehow could not put the proper 
gratitude into his tone, though his heart leaped with 
the thought of all that the money would buy. 

But Villeta’s quick eyes had shot to Luis, and 
they saw that the Carib, carrying a couple of plates, 
stopped in mid progress and stood staring. Don 
Ramon flushed. Before, however, he could speak, 
Luis, overcome with nervousness, tripped and 
dropped his burden. The china clattered to the tiled 
floor in a hundred fragments. Ramon’s rage raised 
his huge strength. 

His fist closed over the flesh at the back of the 
Indian’s neck; his face was rough with knotted 
muscles as he lifted Luis, like a kitten, from the 
floor and, with the merest premonitory swing of 
his own body to gain momentum, threw him across 
the room. The peon’s head bashed against the edge 
of a mahogany buffet; he fell in a heap and 
fainted. 


152 


MONEY TO BURN 


Ramon laughed at the inert figure. Then, for 
Dan’s benefit, he addressed Luis: 

“No, you needn’t apologize at all! Sevres china or 
a stupid Indian—for me the china is the harder to 
replace. Pah!” 

Quite readily his muscles relaxed, and he turned 
again, thoroughly amiable once more, to the white- 
lipped American. He smiled affably as he said, 
with a shrug of explanation that held not the 
slightest morsel of regret: 

“The only way to keep order with these cattle is 
to use what you so gallantly call ‘the strong arm!’ ” 

During all that vast exertion, Pedro had marvel¬ 
ously remained with his claws secure in the cloth 
above his master’s shoulder. Now Villeta plucked 
him delicately from his perch, kissed him, and, 
with a tender gesture of affectionate farewell, flung 
him fluttering into the air. 

“Hasta la vista!” He waved to the bird. A firm, 
easy step carried him toward the outer door, but he 
gave a final reassuring smile to Dan: “Senor Med¬ 
ico.” He waved gayly. “Hasta la vista!” 


CHAPTER XII 


FOLLOWED ! 

I UIS!” 

■* —J The Indian still lay in a huddled heap, but his 
breathing was now steady. In answer to Dan’s cry 
his eyelids fluttered. He tried to smile—failed— 
lay silent. There was an ugly gash, not danger¬ 
ously deep, just above his right temple. 

Dan’s swiftly questing fingers revealed no broken 
bone. He saw that a drawer of the buffet stood 
open. It contained fine table linens. Heedless of 
consequences, he tore several of the napkins into 
bandages, cleaned the wound with water from a 
carafe, and bound up the sufferer’s head. 

Evidently a man of iron, this tall, broken-nosed 
Carib; in an hour, perhaps, he would be about 
again, yet some rest he must have. Dan thought 
first of taking him to his own room; then recalled 
that, next to Tucker, was a small and apparently 
empty bedchamber to which he had himself hoped 
to be assigned. Well—he smiled sternly—it would 


154 MONEY TO BURN 

be more convenient to have his patients close to¬ 
gether. 

Fernando’s precautions had at first muddled his 
sense of the plan of the house, hut he knew a 
road well enough now, however circuitous it might 
be. The moment Luis showed definite signs of re¬ 
turning consciousness, Dan put one of the Indian’s 
arms about his neck, supported him by the waist, 
and half led, half carried him to the chosen room at 
the top of the palacio. 

They passed no one. Tucker’s door was closed. 
In the neighboring bedchamber stood a bed bear¬ 
ing an uncovered mattress. On this Dan, with prac¬ 
tical skill, made Luis as comfortable as possible. 
Having fastened the door softly against any eaves¬ 
dropper, he returned to the wounded man, who 
lay now with his eyes open and intelligent. 

“Many—many thanks,” murmured the Indian, and 
Dan for the first time noted that, in spite of its 
broken nose, the face was pleasant, even fine of its 
sort. 

“Oh, there’s nothing to thank me for,” he said in 
Spanish. “There is something else of far more 


FOLLOWED! 


155 


consequence. What I want you to do is to tell me 
honestly what is wrong about this hacienda.” 

The islander started. He rolled terrified eyes and 
crossed himself. 

“The Senor Medico speaks Spanish!” 

“Yes,” said Dan, and added: “But, for Heaven’s 
sake, don’t tell that!” 

“If I do,” Luis simply answered, “they will kill 
you. They do not dream that you understand 
Spanish.” 

“I’m by no means sure they won’t kill me any¬ 
how, my friend, but before they do it 1 don’t want 
to die of curiosity. Come, let me know what’s go¬ 
ing on here.” 

Luis shook his bandaged head. “I have no 
idea.” 

“You must have! Look here; you can’t like this 
master of yours, or that infernal Fernando, either. 
I know you hate them both. Speak up.” 

The Carib could only stupidly repeat that he 
had no idea. His protest was so solemn—he swore 
by all the saints—that Dan had at last to believe 
him. 


156 


MONEY TO BURN 


“Well, then/’ said the American, taking another 
tack, “help me to get that wretched fellow. Tucker, 
safely out of this hole, anyhow.” 

Luis clasped his thin hands in distress. He looked 
toward the closed door with a fright that was all 
hut palpable. 

“No, no! They find out everything! Besides,” he 
added, as if to justify himself, “what is Senor 
Tucker to me? He is no such wonderful man, 
Senor Medico, and when the machinery stops, he 
calls out loud words that shake the earth; and he 
does not hesitate to shake any of us poor servants, 
too, who block his way. No, no! I cannot risk 
my life for him.” 

Dan ran perturbed fingers through his upright 
hair. He could not guess how young his intense 
straight figure and anxious blue eyes looked, how 
foolhardy his proposition of rescue sounded to his 
hearer, who nevertheless wanted to oblige him if 
the cost were not too great. All he thought was 
that there was need for haste and, if he were to 
count on this man’s help, he must have the promise 


FOLLOWED! 


157 


of it soon. Yet here lie was forced to use up 
precious time in argument. 

“What if he has not always been kind?” Dan 
pleaded. “Would you have him die? He is a 
human being.” 

“So are we all.” The gaunt Garib smiled grimly 
and made an impulsive sign of the cross as if to 
secure for himself a continuance of that state. 

Dan took a few turns of the room. Then, stopping 
abruptly before Luis, he snapped out: “So you still 
love Don Ramon?” 

The copper face took on a deeper shade. Luis’ 
teeth set. “He is very cruel to a faithful servant. 
He will kill me one day. But what can I do? I 
am helpless! Still, I am grateful to the Senor 
Medico for his kindness. If I can safely show that 
I am grateful, I will gladly do so.” 

“And that hunchback. You love him?” 

The swathed head on the pillow writhed. “I hate 
him! Always he has the better place and all be¬ 
cause he was born with a little more intelligence 
than poor Luis. But no more fidelity! It is not my 


158 MONEY TO BURN 

fault that I know no English, that I cannot intrigue 
cleverly about the paper-” 

Paper again! Dan thought that he had found a 
clew. “The what?” 

But on that topic Luis would say no more. “I 
will aid you all I can, Senor Medico, but this Indian 
can help very little.” He beat his thin chest. “He 
must keep his own life if that is possible!” 

Dan pursued the paper theme in vain. It became 
clear that Luis either could not or would not en¬ 
lighten him, and his doctor’s instinct told him that 
he must not be too insistent until the Indian had 
rested a bit. With a submissive sigh, he at last 
put a hand on the Carib’s shoulder. 

“Well, then,” said he not unkindly, “we’ll let that 
pass. But there is another thing, and I guess you 
can tell me this without risking your life. In what 
room does the senorita lodge?” 

At once Luis’ whole manner changed. He sat up 
in bed. A mixture of eagerness and caution il¬ 
luminated his face. There was no look of the sav¬ 
age about him now; he was the loyal, if fright¬ 
ened, slave. 



FOLLOWED! 159 

“The Senor Medico swears he means her no 
harm?” 

Dan vowed that he did not. 

“What apartment is now hers,” said the Indian 
in a tone that was lower than a whisper, “indeed I 
do not know. Of old, when I was servant to her 
esteemed father and her honorable mother—honor¬ 
able truly, though own sister-in-law to Don Ramon 
—then I was privileged; but now I do not know 
what, beyond my commanded duties, goes on inside 
this palacio. One of these hundred rooms she must 
have; more than that I know not.” 

Dan frowned. “You say that Villeta was her 
mother’s brother?” 

“Of a surety; her mother’s brother by marriage. 
His first wife was my dead master’s sister.” 

“I gathered that from something he told me the 
other day. What I don’t understand is why he, in¬ 
stead of the senorita, is the owner of all this.” 

“Nor I. I do not know. Who am I that I should 
understand the law? I am only a Christian! But 
this”—and he looked hard into Dan’s eyes—“of this 
I am sure: Don Ramon calls himself the proprietor 


160 MONEY TO BURN 

of this hacienda, and it is him we must obey; but 
before God he has no right to these lands. That is 
why the Senorita Gertruda ran away and why, over¬ 
taking her, he brought her back from San Lorenzo. 
In San Domingo he may not marry the daughter 
of his wife’s brother, but if he keeps her hidden, 
he may use—perhaps he may at last acquire—her 
lands.” 

The Carib’s eyes blazed. He was, after all, a 
wounded man, and he had told, in broad strokes, all 
he knew. Dan remembered his own profession and 
wondered if, in any case, Luis might not yet ease 
the situation. Meanwhile, however, the fellow must 
certainly have some rest. 

“There—there,” he said, patting Luis’ shoulder, 
“I’ll help her and I’ll help you, too. Try to sleep 
and forget your troubles for a little while. When 
you wake up. I’ll have planned something. Then 
we’ll talk. Just remember this,” he concluded: “If 
you are at all my friend, don’t speak to me when 
others can possibly listen. Don’t even look at me 
as if there were any understanding between us. 


FOLLOWED! 


161 


And, understanding Spanish, I’ll know whatever 
you say to them before me.” 

His new patient lay in an agony of terror as the 
doctor left him. Dan was aware of that, but he was 
aware, also, and with a sense of gratification, that, 
in spite of Luis’ fear of open alliance, he had at last 
a friend in this house of mystery. His spirits rising, 
he went toward the next room. He wondered how 
Tucker fared. He pushed open the door softly, so 
as not to waken the sick man should he sleep. 
Crouched on the floor near the bed, his long arms 
folded across his flat chest, the crooked-mouthed 
hunchback was rocking to and fro. At sight of 
him now, the American’s patience came to an end. 

“You get out of here!” he ordered. “Don Ramon 
told you to keep away from this room. Go!” 

The hunchback continued to rock. His lips 
twisted yet more stringently. He looked up at Dan 
with an impudent leer: “Don Ramon rides, Senor 
Medico. I am lord of this hacienda when he is ab¬ 
sent. I stay!” 

He began to hum softly the same tune his master 


162 MONEY TO BURN 

had hummed in the cafe in that Street of the Pink 
Turtledoves in Sanchez: 

“My mistress is a lady—a lady—his lady; 

She smiles, her lord not looking, and throws a rose to 
me-” 

Dan hesitated. Patience had snapped, but, for¬ 
tunately, his leash of caution has not yet broken. 
Should he use force? His strong young hands 
tightened in his desire to do so. He wanted to 
wring the dwarfs neck. Then he glanced toward 
Tucker. The New Englander’s tired eyes conveyed 
a plain plea against interference. 

Hot blood deluged Dan’s cheeks, but he left the 
room with no further word. Pena’s derisive laugh¬ 
ter rang after his footsteps down the stairs. 

He decided to walk about the estate and think 
things over. He must bring some sort of order 
to his mind; he must decide on some straight course 
of action. Stopping only for the pith helmet that 
Don Ramon had brought him at their point of de¬ 
parture, he strode to the front door and was about 
to pass it when he paused at sight of an armed 



FOLLOWED! 


163 


peon, around his waist the Domingan cattleman’s 
machete-bearing lariat. The sight called an instant 
halt to his thoughts; the man was apparently on 
guard. 

Dan, however, was not long halted. He descended 
the stone steps. The guard made no attempt to 
hinder his movements, but Dan had gone a distance 
of perhaps only fifty yards into the patio toward the 
deserted graveyard when he realized that, not many 
feet behind him, the peon followed with a careless¬ 
ness that was nevertheless deliberate enough. 

He reversed his course. This would never do! 
He returned to the house. Within the palacio , he 
made his way to another exit. A second man, sim¬ 
ilarly armed and lariated, stood there, expression¬ 
less, unforbidding, but obviously prepared to follow. 

Again the American retreated. Here was a situa¬ 
tion that he had in nowise anticipated. He remem¬ 
bered that he had determined to meet guile with 
guile. Very well; he shaped his lips to a non¬ 
chalant whistle and stuck his hands into his trou¬ 
sers pockets quite as if he had noticed nothing ex¬ 
traordinary. He walked from hall to empty room, 


164 


MONEY TO BURN 


from room to empty corridor. Every window was 
shuttered and fastened; he was unable to open one 
of them. Could these precautions have been taken 
only against the fierceness of the tropical sun? 

His heart beat none too evenly. What, after all, 
was to be done? Pena was doubtless still with 
Tucker; the armed peons, under obvious orders 
from the master of the house, were on watch, but 
seemed to confine themselves to guarding the doors 
of exit. 

He could hardly believe that this excessive pre¬ 
caution was directed only against himself. Was 
there not some danger from without? He suddenly 
wondered if the glib story of evading the customs 
were not largely a fiction on Don Ramon’s part. 
Inaction became beyond endurance; if he was not 
to explore the outside of the house, he determined 
to explore its interior. 

An inexplicable impulse sent him back to the 
table at which he had breakfasted. Sitting there 
for a moment, he thought of Don Ramon’s abrupt 
excursion of only an hour earlier, and to make sure 
of its reality he felt in his pockets for the roll of ten 


FOLLOWED! 


165 


bills given him then. They crinkled at his touch. 
Oh, they were there right enough, ten one-hundred- 
dollar bills! 

To the left—up the stairs—ten steps—a door. 
Why, Villeta must have gone at least part of the 
way to the forbidden chapel—perhaps the whole 
way! Forbidden only because it was crumbling? 

Dan must find the Senorita Gertruda, but he must 
also discover Don Ramon’s secret. He would, there¬ 
fore, try to repeat Don Ramon’s walk. 

He entered a narrower corridor than the main 
one, to the right. He found the staircase; brief, 
of worn stone, curving still more to the right. In 
the short hallway above he took ten steps, approx¬ 
imating the length he thought Villeta’s legs would 
consume in a stride. At the tenth pace he found 
himself opposite a narrow oak door, pointed at the 
top. 

For an instant, he stood still and surveyed the 
position. A pace farther along, on the other side 
of the little passageway, was a second door. He 
might not have measured the steps correctly. He 
was still hesitating when the faintest glimmer from 


166 


MONEY TO BURN 


that second door made his glance fasten there. He 
wondered if it were hallucination, or if it actually 
did move ever so slightly and flash a thin streak of 
light along its opening. 

If so, it moved back to place before he could 
blink. Nevertheless, his heart throbbed, and he had 
to force his mind to sane reasoning. The eyes of 
this dreadful house seemed everywhere watching 
him. It must sometimes be his own imagination, he 
told himself. 

He meant to go on in any case. With the master 
away and Pena in the distant sick chamber, here 
seemed his sole chance to discover—whatever was 
to be discovered. First, he would open the pointed 
oak door. 

He tried the handle and pushed gently. The 
door creaked inward, and he followed it through. 

Closing it after him, he went along the inner 
corridor on which it opened. He realized that he 
must be heading straight toward the ruined chapel, 
and yet the chapel was level with the ground, 
whereas this was an upstairs corridor. 

He almost ran into a second portal, very ancient, 


FOLLOWED! 


167 


very small, the top fastened into an equilaterally 
pointed architrave of stone, gray from centuries of 
erosion. It was locked. 

Dan knew what it was. That knowledge of ec¬ 
clesiastical archaeology against which the Pennsyl- 
vania-Duteh lawyer of his home town had infer- 
entially warned him—it was at last of real use. 
This door would lead to a compartment or gallery 
overlooking the chancel of the ruined chapel. 
Medieval noblemen in Europe had built their castles 
in just such a manner so that they and their fam¬ 
ilies could, unseen by the more matutinal and so¬ 
berly garbed serfs, attend early mass in their dress¬ 
ing gowns. 

Quite apart from his desire to solve the mystery 
of the hacienda, rose now, with revived insistence, 
Dan’s interest in a glimpse of the architectural 
beauties that he knew existed, in whatever ruin, be¬ 
yond that barrier. The lock was old, but too firm 
to he shaken loose. Nevertheless, it was not rusted 
from disusage. The American grasped the door by 
its protruding hinges and lifted it with all his 
strength. 


168 


MONEY TO BURN 


He was thinking fast, but his mind no longer 
concerned itself with suspicions of the second door 
in the outer corridor. During the night, when he 
had heard the metallic rhythm of machinery, it had 
come from this direction. 

He pushed upward with rigid muscles. The 
hinges were stiff. Fruitless though the immense 
effort promised to he, he strained on and up. There 
came at last a quiver. The door yielded. He let it 
swing creakingly wide. 

His architectural knowledge had stood him in 
good stead. He stepped upon a stone balcony, just 
such as he had imagined, and looked down at the 
very picture that his fancy had drawn. 

The place no longer bore much of the air of a 
sanctuary. Weeds had invaded it; from between 
the tiles of the floor, purple wild flowers edged their 
way. The font was broken. Halfway up the apse 
an unusually large and very rickety confessional 
box leaned crazily. Sunlight made crooked dusty 
streaks through a small and partly broken rose win¬ 
dow opposite the high altar, which itself was hare 
and deserted. But what, regardless of all his archi- 


FOLLOWED! 


169 


tectural interest, caught and held Dan’s gaze was a 
two-peaked hulk of steel that towered in the aisle 
and seemed, in spite of the general desertion and de¬ 
cay, a living sacrilege on what was once a piece of 
holy ground. He bent far over the stone rail to 
look at it. 

Before he could examine it, he drew up short. 
He was sure that he had heard a call, muffled by 
distance, but nevertheless a call. 

It did not sound like a cry for help. Rather it 
reminded him of the senorita’s scream of warning 
when, in his hammock in the jungle, the great 
snake was about to strangle him. Could this now 
be she? He had caught the phrase: 

“Look out!” 

In that he felt he must be mistaken. Surely no 
one at present in the palacio , except Pena and the 
sick man, could speak English—and Pena would be 
slow to give Dan a warning. 

The American glanced behind him—nothing. He 
listened intently—no further sound. Again he bent 
over the rail. 


170 


MONEY TO BURN 


Here, assuredly, was the machinery that he had 
heard at work, and here, he now knew, was that 
which had taken Villeta from the breakfast room. 
Don Ramon had given the impression of seeking 
money for Stone’s fee; in reality, the planter had 
had that with him from the first; he left his guest 
—Dan saw it as with the eyes of a seer—to satisfy 
himself before quitting the hacienda that all was 
well with this desecrator of a chapel. 

So much revelation vouchsafed—no more. Dese¬ 
crator? There were two instruments. As Stone 
looked, they became less indistinct, but no less mys¬ 
terious. Well oiled they seemed, and perfectly con¬ 
ditioned. What were they that they should so ob¬ 
sess Villeta? 

Dan was nothing of a mechanic. He did not 
know the nature of the hulking things, but he was 
looking at those shining objects trying to elucidate 
their meaning, when something hissed beside him. 

A rope! A lariat! 

It just missed him. 

He wheeled. 


FOLLOWED! 


171 


In the corridor beyond the little door that Dan 
had lifted from its hinges, in the act of loosing his 
hold of the failed lasso, stood that first armed peon, 
who had followed Dan from the palacio’s front door 
into the open. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE FORTUNE 

F^OR one sharp instant, as Dan wheeled upon him, 
^ the peon paused and the two men stood at gaze. 
The servant was a nimble-bodied black whose teeth 
flashed white in a surprised grin. Dan saw the hot 
light of the savage in that face; he read ferocity 
in the raggedly clad form that leaned forward 
ready to spring. 

Without a flicker of his wide eyes, the guard 
reached down at last for a machete, thrust, in this 
instance, through the soiled sash about his middle. 
One blow of that frightful weapon, part knife, part 
cleaver, would serve any enemy. 

Dan waited no attack from it. As if jumping for 
the ball in the decisive moment of a football game, 
he took a flying leap and flung himself with all 
his weight upon the Domingan. One fist smashed 
into the black face, then seized the neck; the other 
reached across and downward. It grasped the 


THE FORTUNE 


173 


weapon that the peon was already struggling to 
draw. The Domingan's arms relaxed and came 
back mightily; he had the advantage of being braced 
against the inner wall and now, with unexpected 
power, he sought to push Dan away and so gain 
the chance to free the machete. 

They wrestled in silence. Now they were locked 
in a panting embrace; again the peon wTenched at 
his knife, and Stone strove to drag it away. Each 
fought with every muscle, used every ounce of 
strength. 

A fear lest the peon should shout for help ap¬ 
palled Dan. Against that help. Stone w 7 ould be de¬ 
fenseless. One thing w T as certain: it had not been 
this fellow who gave the call heard immediately 
before the attack. He was sure at last that that 
w r as meant for a warning to him. But he had no 
opportunity for conjecture with his life at stake. 

Shifting his pressure ever so little, Dan shoved 
Jhe upper part of the arm that grappled for the 
machete hard against the moving larynx of the peon. 
For a fraction of time the enemy’s eye3 bulged. If 
only Stone could risk a trifle more pressure! But 


174 MONEY TO BURN 

he dared not loosen ever so slightly his grip on the 
weapon. 

The combatants’ breath mingled in a cloud of 
steam. Dan could feel the other’s beating on his 
forehead. His own came and went noisily. 

With a twist the adversary lowered the upper 
half of his body and pushed again. The stone 
balcony was only two feet high; the drop from it 
to the floor of the chapel was a good fifteen feet. 
As they crashed to the floor of the balcony, neither 
releasing his hold, Dan realized that the peon’s pur¬ 
pose was now to hurl him over the rail. He was 
handicapped because he must keep a grip on the 
machete and yet prevent a call for help that might 
summon the entire vindictive household, and the 
strength against which he was pitted seemed in¬ 
exhaustible. 

The peon lay beneath him. He had let go the 
machete, but Dan could not secure it, and with one 
free hand and an arm partially free, the black was 
actually lifting his opponent upward and outward— 
was lifting him against the rail—up—up- 

One of Dan’s kicking feet caught the top of the 



THE FORTUNE 


175 


stone fretwork. He shoved backward. He reversed 
their positions. Consciousness nearly left him as 
his head struck the balcony paving, but there was 
no instant to lose. With a heave that promised to 
be his last, he had the surprised body of the peon 
straddling the corrugated coping itself, where it 
vacillated as if doubtful which way to roll. 

Dan’s strength was gone, but some other force 
decided the issue. The Domingan, bewildered by 
the speed of the reversal, lying now on his back, 
a leg actually on each side of the rail, lost his sense 
of direction, rolled into mid-air, gathered momentum, 
flew outward and downward, and crashed headlong 
into the pit of the chapel, hurtling against the 
rickety confessional box with such force that its 
door was burst ajar. 

Slowly and dazedly Dan struggled partially up¬ 
right. He pulled himself, by the stone bars, to his 
knees and, still breathing hard, looked over the rail. 
The man who a moment since had been fighting so 
desperately lay very still below him. 

Dan lowered himself from the balcony and 
dropped to the chapel floor. The Domingan was 


176 


MONEY TO BURN 


quite unconscious, but alive. Indeed, a rapid ex¬ 
amination showed a fractured leg and a broken arm 
—the arm that had held the machete—but the man 
was not fatally hurt. 

Then came a new alarm. As he listened to the 
faint but certain beatings of his victim’s heart, Dan 
heard another sound. Not a repetition of that call; 
this was something far more ominous. It was the 
sound of approaching steps along the gallery above. 

Had somebody heard the noise of the Domingan’s 
fall? 

There was a narrow space behind the confessional 
box. Stone crept swiftly into this, lying flat, but 
peeped cautiously around its protecting corner. 
Through the narrow doorway above came the hor¬ 
rid form of Fernando Pena. 

So he had left the patient whom he had previ¬ 
ously refused to quit! Perhaps, rocking derisively 
on his haunches back there, he had come to think 
that, after all, Dan had better be watched. Perhaps 
this peon who had followed Stone had first warned 
Pena. But, on second consideration, that was im¬ 
possible. There would not have been time. No, 


THE FORTUNE 


177 


Fernando must have started on some other errand; 
the hunchback had no inkling of the physician’s 
presence here. 

Some broken woodwork lay before Dan, a pro¬ 
tecting screen. Prone, he could watch Fernando’s 
every move without himself being detected. 

Pena squeaked a great oath as he peered across 
the rail. Nimbly he crept over it and, his long knife 
between his teeth, jumped the sheer distance with a 
catlike agility that made him bounce toward the 
body of the peon as he alighted. He ran to it and 
leered at it. With a grin of diabolical pleasure, he 
drew back and, knife now in hand, surveyed the 
unconscious man. 

“So, you thief, you have been caught by your own 
cunning!” His voice rang shrilly through the dis¬ 
mantled chapel. “No more sneaking tricks from 
you whenever the master goes away! No more 
treachery, my friend. I’ve been watching for just 
such treachery.” He laughed aloud. “You’ll be the 
third to die here. The rest will all learn enough 
to keep away—or else to stay in church forever!” 


178 MONEY TO BURN 

The hunchback raised his knife and struck. It 
came up red. He struck again. 

After the second blow he had to tug to release 
the blade. He wiped the dripping steel on his vic¬ 
tim’s shirt, walked calmly to the chapel’s main door, 
and opened it with a great key from his belt. A 
blast of hot yellow sunshine silhouetted his gargoyle 
shape. Then the portal swung behind him and the 
lock turned. He was probably gone for discreet 
help to bury the body and repair such damage as 
he had observed. 

Dan was alone. 

The murder had happened with a swiftness be¬ 
yond prevention—a swiftness that outdistanced re¬ 
alization itself. From leap to blow, it had not con¬ 
sumed a full minute. 

Blaming himself for the amazement that had 
kept him from his late enemy’s rescue, Dan crept 
out of hiding. He looked at the body. The fingers 
were already stiffening; there was here no life now 
left to save. 

Although horror enveloped him, Stone glanced 
about. He was determined to see all that could 


THE FORTUNE 


17y 


be seen. When he had removed the door above, 
he thought only of the architecture of a crumbling 
chapel, which he felt such an impelling desire to ex¬ 
amine. Now he did not even note its presence ex¬ 
cept as an adjunct to the worldly articles that ten¬ 
anted the place. 

Dan leaned heavily against the wall. An hour 
ago and this chapel would have fascinated him as 
a rare example of church architecture; he could see 
it at this moment only as a charnel house. 

Only? His roving eyes were caught again by 
those twin machines. Even his technical ignorance 
recognized them for a pair of some sort of presses. 
More, they were plainly in daily or nightly activity 
—and yet there was no sign of sugar cane about 
them. 

Shuddering a little, he glanced back at the dead 
peon, then, above his head, to the confessional box 
against which the body had struck. The impact 
had broken its glaringly modern lock. Dan looked 
within. 

The interior fittings had long since been ripped 


180 


MONEY TO BURN 


out. The box was almost completely filled with 
neatly arranged piles of American bank notes—new 
hundred-dollar bills, replicas of those which he at 
that moment carried in his pocket. 


CHAPTER XIY 


ANOTHER PRISONER 

OUNTERFEITING—that must be Don Ramon’s 
^ secret and the secret of his murderous hunch¬ 
back lieutenant. 

Gingerly Dan stepped across the dead peon and 
crowded himself within the box. Here everything 
was methodical. It might have been the legal store¬ 
room of a miniature mint. To the top hill of each 
stack of money was pinned a slip of paper—a 
memorandum stating the amount piled below. 

He began a sum in addition. Roughly, he figured 
that this was the likeness of a million, six hundred 
thousand dollars. Even a bit more. 

He remembered what had passed in his hear¬ 
ing between Villeta and Fernando, the hunchback 
declaring that they had enough, that more would 
be dangerous, that printing should cease, and that, 
when it had ceased, Tucker must die* Dan re¬ 
membered how Don Ramon stood out for a round 


182 


MONEY TO BURN 


two millions. Stone recalled a score of hints and 
judged himself severely for not having joined them 
one to another and footed up the inevitable conclu¬ 
sion long ago. 

And Tucker? Tucker, who was to die? What, in 
'ill this, was Josiah Tucker’s role? 

Dan thought of the weak, none-too-honest face 
that had looked up from the pillows in the sick 
voom. He thought of the delicately modeled but 
discolored fingers. An American, too! Why, of 
course, the fellow had somehow been seduced from 
honorable but, in Tucker’s mind, underpaid gov¬ 
ernment employ; he was the expert necessary, 
whenever any technical slip occurred, to the actual 
making of these notes. There was just one place 
from which he could have come—from the manu¬ 
facture of real money to the manufacture of bogus. 
The rogues had doubtless persuaded him with the 
promise of lifelong wealth, and he, at long last, 
lying sick in his bed at the top of the palacio, had 
come to realize that they did not mean to fulfill 
their promise, that they had decided to rid them- 


ANOTHER PRISONER 


183 


selves of him when his work was done and so have 
one less to share the spoils. 

A few bits of bank-note paper lay on the floor. 
Where were the necessary rolls of it? Oh, it was 
easy enough to piece the facts together now! The 
conspirators had just used the last of their old 
stock; it was a new supply that Ramon rode to¬ 
day to meet. How he was to procure the quality 
and texture requisite, Dan did not then inquire, 
but it was clear that, when he came back, the 
printing- 

Dan stopped short. If he was caught in this 
chapel by Villeta, if he was caught by Fernando, 
his life would not be worth a button. 

He ran to the door. Pena had locked it. It was 
heavy and firm and not to be budged by any one 
man’s muscular strength. Dan surveyed the even 
sides of the chapel. The only possible exit was by 
the way he had come, yet there was no slightest 
projection whereby he could raise himself, and, 
jump as he might, his fingers could not grasp the 
bottommost opening in the rail of the balcony. 

He thought of shoving something over and climb- 



184 


MONEY TO BURN 


ing on it, but there was nothing movable that was of 
sufficient height. He searched in a desperation that 
impaired his ingenuity; he pushed, while great beads 
of sweat blinded him, at all the extraneous and other 
objects in the desecrated chancel, the high altar, 
the confessional box, the machinery itself. Sud¬ 
denly he saw the lariat. When the peon had failed 
with it, he had released it entirely. It shot clear 
over the rail and there, unseen while Dan looked 
upward, it lay at his very feet on the chapel floor. 

He picked it up and tried to throw it across the 
rail of the gallery, but he was unskilled and 
nervous. Once—twice—three times it flew far of 
the mark. Only on his fourth attempt, which he 
made with more calculation, did he succeed. The 
rope circled the rail and was so looped that the 
farther end hung low enough for his straining 
fingers to catch it. He knotted the two ends to¬ 
gether, tested it for his weight, made it fast to the 
stone altar rail, and clumsily clambered up, hand 
over hand. 

He was not light, and the lariat was old and 
worn. He had just grasped a balcony post well 


ANOTHER PRISONER 


185 


above his head when, with a snap, the rope broke. 
His feet dangled for a moment; then he had them 
braced against the wall of the chapel and, with a 
great swing, pulled himself up to safety. 

He staggered into the main hallway. His head 
reeling, his feet unsteady, he turned down that 
passage. As he did so, the second door, which 
had so caught his attention not many minutes since, 
opened quickly and somebody stepped out. 

“You!” he gasped. 

It was the Sehorita Gertruda. She was dressed in 
a long and clinging gown of some soft white stuff, 
typically Spanish; but no mantilla masked her now. 
Her delicately carven face, dusky with the blood 
of Spain, was flooded by crimson; her lips shone 
as red as the hibiscus flower that drooped in her 
blue-black hair; her dark eyes glowed. 

Dan’s surprise at the sight of her overcame every 
other sensation. “It was you who called to me?” he 
persisted. 

The answer was not in words. Her fingers closed 
on his shoulders. She drew him across the 
threshold and shut the door behind their entrance. 


186 


MONEY TO BURN 


Her present bedroom, this; but plainly not one 
that had long served that purpose. No Spanish 
lady’s bower, no pretty hangings, no feminine trifles, 
Here were only a bare table with a cracked mirror 
above it, a sixteenth-century armario, a narrow 
black iron cot, and a window strongly barred. 

She let go of him and stepped back. One slim 
hand was tight against her breast that rose and 
fell. 

Now speech—broken, but all clear enough— 
poured from her panting mouth. 

“I heard a strange step in the corridor—guessed 
it to be yours. Earlier, I had seen my uncle ride 
away. The lock was old. I broke it when I saw 
him go. The good God gave me a strength that they 
thought impossible. But when I peeped out, I was 
not sure that it was you—and I was afraid. Then 
I saw what followed you and became certain. So I 
called.” 

He realized that she was astonishingly making use 
of his native language. There was a Spanish ac¬ 
cent; there might be unusual construction, but the 
speech was his own. 


ANOTHER PRISONER 


187 


“You do speak English!” he cried. 

“Yes—yes! Did you kill him—did you kill that 
man?” 

“Don Ramon said-” 

“That I didn’t speak it? I know, but he lied— 
he always lies!—but I dared not deny his words to 
his face. He ordered in San Lorenzo that I have 
no communication with any stranger; he dreaded 
what I might tell of his wrongs against me. When, 
here, he suspected that I might disobey him in 
secret; when he feared that you might chance to 
find me, he locked me in this room near the chapel, 
where he said he had forbidden you to go. Tell 
me, did you kill that man?” 

“No. Rut he won’t bother us.” 

She clasped her hands. “And I may trust you? 
I feel sure that I may trust you!” 

Dan smiled a little. “In spite of what you heard 
me say of myself to your uncle, I guess you can 
trust me.” 

“I know it. Why did I ask? I know it! That 
was my reason for opening the door. It was my 
chance—the chance I had been waiting for ever 



188 


MONEY TO BURN 


since he recaptured me in San Lorenzo. When I 
first saw you, I said: ‘This man looks honorable; 
he looks kind.’ You are an American. While my 
parents lived, before my uncle made me a prisoner 
on this hacienda for their money’s sake, I went to 
school in your country.” She had come to the 
climax of her appeal. She tottered toward him. 
“You must rescue me!” 

He had wanted nothing so much as the oppor¬ 
tunity to take her away, yet now he remembered 
the armed guards below stairs. Danger to himself— 
to Tucker—might be cheerfully defied. But danger 
to her? 

“I must think of a plan,” he said. 

She seized him again. “Don’t think—act! Oh, 
you must rescue me! I am quite, quite alone in 
the world. Don Ramon is my only relative, and he 
has robbed me of this, which was my parents’ estate. 
He calls himself a guardian, hut he squanders his 
trust for his own pleasures. There remains no one 
to whom I have the blood right to appeal.” She 
raised her lovely face close to his. “Senor Stone, 


ANOTHER PRISONER 


189 


for the love of the Mother of God, get me out of 
this prison house!” 

She was penniless, she was friendless, she was 
beautiful. Would she, should he succeed, be any 
better off, alone in Santo Domingo City, alone in 
New York, alone anywhere, than here? He was 
ignorant of the jungle trails; the police sought him; 
at this hacienda, he was one man against a score, 
himself a prisoner. Nevertheless, he took both her 
little hands. 

“I’ll do it!” said he. 

She laughed. There, in the desperation of her 
plight, she laughed as if their escape were al¬ 
ready accomplished. The completeness of her faith 
in him increased his doubts of his own ability. 

“I’ll have to reconnoiter-” 

“Then go!” she cried, pressing him backward. 
“Go now! There must be some opportunity as long 
as Don Ramon is absent. There must be. Luis likes 
me—get Luis. He will find us a way to leave the 
house. I should have gone after him myself had 
you refused. Hurry—hurry! I cannot remain here 
one instant more than is necessary.” She was push- 



190 


MONEY TO BURN 


ing him from the apartment as eagerly as she had 
drawn him into it. “Go!” 

The door closed on him. He was alone in the hall. 
He could almost believe that her appearance there 
had been some dream that invaded his brain made 
dizzy by the fight on the balcony and the discoveries 
in the chapel. Resolutely, however, he pulled him¬ 
self together and headed for the room in which he 
had left the broken-nosed Carib. 

He ran—and he ran, some twenty yards away, 
directly into, and well nigh over, Fernando. 

The hunchback’s eyes were wild. As, just in time 
to save himself from a trampling, he sprang aside, 
Pena swore a crackling oath. “Where you been?” 

Dan drew up short. He must stop. It would not 
do to excite suspicion now, but he was not going 
to be tyrannized over any longer. 

“None of your business where I’ve been,” he 
said. “Am I a convict here? And are you the 
warden?” 

Those questions missed Fernando. He had some¬ 
thing else to think of, and he thought of it with 


ANOTHER PRISONER 


191 


malicious triumph. “I been look for you ’most 
everywhere. Senor Medico, you are not the wise 
doctor. You don’ know all things. You make mis¬ 
take about that Tucker get along all right now. 
He take spasm just this minute. You follow me 
immediate!” 


CHAPTER XV 


THE WILD CAT 

D AN had to go. He owed that much to Tucker as 
his patient and as a fellow American to whom 
—whatever the sick man’s crimes—he had prom¬ 
ised more than professional help. Moreover, this, 
indeed, was not a propitious moment for renewing 
Pena’s suspicions. Stone followed Fernando. 

No chance to talk—to ask questions concerning 
what had happened — before their destination was 
reached, on this occasion in no roundabout way. 
Pena went ahead of the doctor and went at such 
a pace that the latter had all he could do to main¬ 
tain that distance which, at the start, the guide 
placed between them. Small time elapsed before 
they entered the New Englander’s room. 

Tucker lay there, silent and motionless. Ilis face 
was purple; his eyes stared. Dan bent over him. 
A look was enough. 

“He is dead,” said Stone. 


THE WILD CAT 


m 


The brief words showed nothing of the shock 
that the surviving American had sustained. His 
brain reeled, but he gazed over his shoulder, with 
quick intensity, at Pena. 

Fernando shrugged. 

“Just when,” persisted Dan, “was Tucker seized 
with this — ‘spasm?’ ” 

The hunchback’s face was rarely communicative; 
it was now a perfect veil. Nevertheless, his mouth 
answered glibly enough: “But now, Senor Medico. 
It is three minutes — less. I go at once for doctor. 
Senor Tucker throw himself; he talk loud — and 
about nothing. He look black — he look red. I run 
at once for doctor.” 

A lie, of course; yet it would not be well to 
remind Fernando that he must have left his patient 
with nobody to care for him while the chapel was 
sought and a knife stuck into the helpless peon on 
the floor. Time pressed, and a renewal of open 
hostilities must wait until plans of escape had been 
perfected. 

Pena peered up close to the dead man, too, as if 
fearful lest he might still be able to speak. “Tucker 


194 


MONEY TO BURN 


talks! Tucker talks! Tucker talks!” Dan almost 
heard again the servant’s protest to Don Ramon. 
Well, this solved one riddle that had begun to 
trouble him, the riddle of how to keep his promise 
to rescue his fellow American. 

Something more immediately pertinent prompted 
the physician’s actions. He drew gradually away, 
continuing to put questions about the case, and, as 
he did so, a course toward liberty for the girl and 
for himself was revealed to him. It was a desper¬ 
ate course. But what course would be otherwise? 
What other, indeed, existed? Still making formal 
professional queries, he maneuvered so that he stood 
between Pena and the open door, and close to the 
table on which still rested the dead man’s breakfast 
tray. Then he spoke. 

“Your master,” said he, “will not be pleased. 
He wished Mr. Tucker to live so that he might 
go on with his work.” 

Behind Dan, Fernando Pena’s dull eyes gleamed a 
flash of triumphant defiance. 

“The good God,” he said, “take Senor Tucker 


THE WILD CAT 


195 


because maybe the Senor Tucker he finish his work 
already.” 

There had been the marks of clutching fingers 
about the dead American’s throat. Dan, in his 
swift examination, had not missed them. 

“The good God,” he declared, with a clarity that 
could not be misunderstood, “did not cause this 
spasm. That was the devil’s work.” He looked full 
at the hunchback and shot out his concluding 
words: “This man was strangled; he was mur¬ 
dered !” 

On the instant, as if the statement were a signal, 
Fernando’s right hand flashed to his knife, pre¬ 
pared to throw it, but this time Dan knew what 
to expect. It was with just such a contingency 
in view that he had backed to his present position. 

With a single movement he seized and flung the 
breakfast tray straight into the hunchback s face, 
and he flung himself after it. He was too well 
aware of his antagonist’s strength to concern him¬ 
self with the ethics of the prize ring. 

Pena, however, was quick to recover. He leaped 
into mid-air. The pair literally flew into each 


196 


MONEY TO BURN 


other’s arms, and from the impact were dashed to 
the floor. The knife shot away at a tangent and 
rattled under the bed. 

Over and over they rolled, nearly crossing the 
room in the fury of their battle. They knocked 
down chairs and upset tables. Nearly everything 
that was within the apartment seemed to be in 
noisy motion. Only the dead man lay unmoved, his 
open eyes staring upward. 

“The devil’s work,” Dan had called Tucker’s mur¬ 
der, and certainly with a demoniac ferocity and a 
demoniac power Pena fought his accuser. Their 
previous battle had been nothing to this. In Fer¬ 
nando’s diminutive and malformed body resided a 
frightful energy. His muscles were iron, his nerves 
steel. Seen at his ordinary occupations, he ap¬ 
peared a creature that the average man could break 
across his thigh; fired by his frenzy for blood, he 
was all but incapable of defeat, all but irresistible 
in murder. It was in contest against this hellish 
force that Stone had rashly staked the senorita’s 
chances of safety. The dwarf fought in the full 
fury of a jungle beast; his wide nostrils fanned 


THE WILD CAT 197 

Dan’s cheeks with the flame of their breath; his 
yellow teeth shone in his twisted mouth. 

Stone, powerful as he was, felt upon him the 
absolute horror of contact with deformity and knew 
himself to be struggling against a wild cat. Pena 
bit into his coat and through it till he drew blood 
from the shoulder. Losing his hold there, his teeth 
snapped in air until they fastened on the tow- 
colored bristle that surmounted Dan’s round head. 
They pulled. At the same time, the hunchback 
kicked ruthlessly. With his long, thick, curved 
nails he clawed; he beat his own arms and head 
and chest indifferently against his enemy. He 
shrieked rage and exultation. 

Suddenly he began to jab, with two rigid fingers, 
straight at the American’s eyes. It was the ultimate 
tactic of the thug the world over. Dan was to be 

blinded! He tried to shout out- 

Just then the entire weight of the hunchback 
miraculously lifted. The voice of Luis shouted en¬ 
couragement. The Indian, no longer able to stand 
the din of the struggle, had got out of bed in the 
next room and rushed hither, had seen the last few 



MONEY TO BURN 


198 

seconds of the battle, realized its import, and now 
tore the madman from his victim. 

Stone reeled against the nearest wall. He wiped 
the sweat from his eyes. A shiver of nausea shook 
him. 

“Luis-” He stammered thanks. 

From the rear the Carib held squirming Pena in a 
wiry grip. The prisoner’s feet banged back and 
forth angrily against Luis’ shins, with a ferocity 
that brought a gray pallor to the Indian’s battered 
face; but he did not loosen his clutch. 

“Deprisa!” he called. 

That appeal restored Dan. He sprang again into 
action. 

There must be no delay. Jerking the towels from 
the washstand, he tied up their captive, whose pierc¬ 
ing cries they speedily silenced with a pillow slip 
for a gag. They trussed him securely and fastened 
him tight to the footboard of the bed on which dead 
Tucker lay. Pena’s gaze glared vengeance, but he 
could neither speak nor move. 

“Behold him!” said Luis in his Spanish patois and 



THE WILD GAT 


199 


with savage satisfaction. “He cannot harm us, and 
only his eyes can speak.” 

Dan answered with significance, and no longer 
hesitating to use the language of the hacienda in 
Pena’s presence: “Senor Tucker’s eyes speak also!” 

Luis made the sign of the cross. He tiptoed to 
the farther end of the room and took two candles 
from a mantelshelf. He stood the fallen bed table 
upright and on this placed one of the pair; he moved 
a chair to the head of the bed on the other side 
and put the second candle there. With steady 
fingers he lighted them both. 

“Now,” said he, “Senor Tucker will rest more 
quietly.” 

Dan watched the procedure, gathering his wits as 
it went on. Miraculously he had come through his 
two fights with no injury save that slight wound 
on the shoulder, but his aching brain rested itself 
for a moment among trivial things. He wondered 
how the dead man would relish Luis’ attentions. 
Tucker had probably been reared a Congregation¬ 
alism Then he ground out cinematographically 
enough of the story of what had occurred in the 


200 MONEY TO BURN 

chapel and of the Senorita Gertruda’s subsequent 
appeal for release. 

“So,” he concluded, “now that we’ve got Pena 
safe and sound, we must get the lady and ourselves 
out of here. But every door is guarded. How are 
we to do it?” 

The Indian nodded toward their captive. “First 
of all, we must kill him.” 

Pena writhed. 

Dan gaped at his rescuer. “We can’t do that.” 

“Senor, he has heard your plans!” 

“He’s safe enough.” 

“Until he’s found—no longer.” Luis spread out 
his hands. “You asked me what to do, and I tell 
you. Come, senor; it will waste not one little 
minute.” 

Stone looked at the deformed wretch trussed 
against the footboard. If ever terror dwelt in hu¬ 
man eyes, it dwelt in Fernando’s now. The man 
was loathsome, but he was helpless. 

Luis mistakenly read hesitation in Dan’s face. 

“He would have killed you ” said the Carib. 

“That was in a fight.” 


THE WILD CAT 


201 


“He would kill you anyway, at any time, if he 
dared.” 

“Well, I won’t kill him in cold blood. Get all 
ideas of murder out of your head and keep them 
out.” Dan’s tone was final. 

Luis cast his resigned eyes heavenward. 

Again Stone looked at Pena, crouched before him. 
The bonds were quite secure. Dan nodded to his 
companion to precede him from the death chamber. 

“You guarded Senor Tucker alive,” said Luis to 
the glowering Fernando; “you shall stay and guard 
him dead.” 

He stalked out of the room. Dan followed and 
closed the door. He locked it on the outside. There 
Luis again attempted an answer to the American’s 
question. 

“Senor, I do not know how we are to escape.” 

Said Dan: “That servant of Don Ramon’s who fol¬ 
lowed me from the front door where he was watch¬ 
ing! He is dead—as I told you—by this hunch¬ 
back’s hand, in the chapel. Did he leave his post 
deserted? There is a bare chance that he did.” 

Though Luis’ dark eyes were full of a doglike 


202 MONEY TO BURN 

devotion to his project, he shook his head doubt¬ 
fully. 

“He may have been missed. They may have 
found him in the chapel,” the Carib answered in a 
hopeless helplessness. “This is not a house where 
secrets are kept—except by Don Ramon and Fer¬ 
nando Pena.” 

“Well,” Dan responded cheerfully enough, “that’s 
our only chance and. we’ve got to take it!” 


CHAPTER XYI 


READY! 


UIS, still bruised and weak from his master’s 



manhandling, nevertheless was sufficiently recov¬ 
ered to be ready to follow—and to follow with an 
intelligence the lack of which he had bemoaned as 
his course in Villeta’s service. He made sure that 
his lariat was fast about his waist; he ran lithely 
to a cupboard and brought forth two villainous- 
looking machetes. He rummaged in the buffet for 
bread and a bottle of wine, and from somewhere 
procured part of a ham which he slashed into thick 
slices, bundling the lot up in a cloth and fastening 
it at his side. 

Meanwhile, Dan softly retraced his steps to that 
corridor down which he had so lately hurried. He 
went swiftly but warily, yet he met with no im¬ 
pediment, saw no one. So far as all this part of the 
great house was concerned, the usurping master s 
retainers, it now seemed, might have ridden away 


204 


MONEY TO BURN 


with him that morning. Whatever the racket of 
the fight with Pena, it had not reached the ears of 
the guards below. 

A few hours since, Stone would have said that 
each one of those many doors in the long halls 
of the palacio resembled all the others, and he would 
have had no little difficulty in finding the one that 
he sought. But not now. The girl was waiting 
behind it, and the fact of her unseen presence 
there distinguished it from its fellows. Mistake was 
impossible. 

Although no alarm had been given by his struggle, 
he hardly dared to knock. He bent to the broken 
lock and whispered. 

“Senorita!” 

She was expectant. She opened the door. “Is 
everything prepared?” She stood there like a flower 
that waits the rising sun. 

“Less than it ought to be—but as much as pos¬ 
sible. How about you?” 

Every woman is definitely of two sorts: Either 
she is never ready—which is frequent—or else her 


READY! 


205 


celerity in anticipation outdistances that of the 
average man. When it is a question of dressing 
for the theater or a dance, she will let you wear 
out your shoes as they pace the reception room, 
\ut when there arises a real emergency, she is rarely 
found delaying—in the matter of clothes. 

“Ready?” said the senorita. “But see!” 

She stepped backward a pace. Dan could ill 
afford the time for inspection, but he ventured it. 

However simply her jailers had furnished her 
room, they had brought her wardrobe with her 
and stowed it in that sixteenth-century armario. 
She was habited for the road, and her practical 
accouterments gave her a look absurdly youthful. 
He felt at first as if he were about to kidnap a 
child, but then his rapid gaze noted the black man¬ 
tilla held in her white hands, symbol of the Spanish 
girl of marriageable age. 

She followed his glance. Her lips curved into a 
twitching smile, yet her swiftly upraised arm 
showed, the next moment, that she realized some¬ 
thing of the seriousness of their undertaking. Her 


MONEY TO BURN 


206 

face was as calm as a woodland pool, but it was 
also resolute. 

There was a brief pause. 

“Am I not ready?” she asked presently. 

Dan caught his breath. She was lovely, and he 
was about to lead her into danger. 

“We’ve got Pena tied up, but there are guards 
at most of the doors, you know. They’re armed, and 
they must have orders not to let us pass. We think 
we can find one way out of the house that isn’t 
watched, only then there’ll be the patio and the 
outer defense to negotiate.” 

She made a gesture that defied these things. 

“That’s all right,” said Stone, “and of course 
they won’t want to hurt you if they can avoid it, 
those fellows down there. It’d be only Luis and 
me they’d aim for; they’d just try to recapture 
you. Still, they’re bound to be careless with their 
guns, and in any mix-up-” 

“Let us go,” said the girl. 

He looked meaningly into her black eyes. “You’ll 
take the risk?” 

She bowed a full and comprehending assent. 



READY! 


207 


“It’s some risk, you understand,” he still warned 
her. 

The senorita advanced to him. She looked up 
into his face; she put a hand in both of his. “Any¬ 
thing—death—is better than remaining here. Let 
us lose no time. Let us go.” 

He ran by her side to the room in which he had 
left Luis. The Garib, though fuming from im¬ 
patience, displayed his preparations with a certain 
degree of simple pride. 

“That’s good,” Dan commended him. 

“Take this,” said Luis. He shoved a machete 
into Stone’s fist. “First I look ahead,” he added. 

From the doorway Dan and Gertruda watched 
him as he tiptoed to the central staircase. He ran 
silently down it, reconnoitering. All but his head 
disappeared. 

The girl pressed Stone’s hand. “If I escape,” 
she gratefully whispered, “I shall owe it all to you.” 

“And Luis,” Dan corrected. 

“And Luis,” admitted Gertruda. 

“And if you don’t escape?” His voice shook 
at this repeated mention of her peril. 


208 MONEY TO BURN 

She smiled. “Then I shall be in no worse posi¬ 
tion than I was before.” 

“But if—if- I mean if you’re hurt?” 

“You mean if I am killed.” Her own tone was 
serenity itself. “Why not speak the word? If I 
were armed, I could force the issue. I could make 
it that they should never recapture me alive. As 
the affair stands, well, if I am killed by mere 
accident, how can it matter? Here I have been 
a prisoner, whereas the dead that die in the Lord, 
they are free.” She pressed his hand again. 
“Charge yourself with no crime against me, what¬ 
ever may happen, senor. You risk much for me, 
and if my life is risked too, why that is at my 
request.” 

He looked down at her. Above them rose the 
vaulted ceiling; behind them the long corridor 
stretched away, silent, empty. At their feet de¬ 
scended the wide staircase—the way perhaps to 
liberty, but certainly through jeopardy. Long he 
looked at her and she at him. 

A low whistle interrupted them. Dan’s glance 



READY! 


209 


shifted to the stairway. Luis was impatiently 
beckoning. 

The American wanted to take this woman in his 
arms. He might never see her, after a few minutes 
hence, again. Surely she would forgive him if he 
told her now what he had come to know she meant 
to him. Her face was very close; her moist, red 
lips were parted. Surely- 

Again the whistle. 

Dan released her. He turned to the stairs. 

“Gome!” he said. 



CHAPTER XVII 

LUIS’ MACHETE 


HPHEY joined the Carib. 

* “All is safe,” he whispered, and then ominously 
added: “So far.” 

The three stole down the broad stairs. Before 
them the main hall lay, full of shadow. Anything 
might be hiding here, but the tall front door was 
open, and there a glare of sunlight outlined an 
oblong of the stone floor, baking it a bright yellow. 
Just so the peon must have left his post, in his 
haste of suspicion, to follow Dan. 

The intervening space was brief, but the journey 
across it seemed to the fugitives to consume an 
interminable period. No guards, however, leaped 
from the darkness; no alarm shattered the stillness 
of the house. A few yards from that patch of 
yellow light, Luis gestured a command to pause. 

Himself, he ran nimbly forward, stopped, and 
then, an inch at a time, thrust his head beyond 


LUIS’ MACHETE 


211 


the threshold. They saw him turn this way and 
that. They waited for a while breathless. 

Would there be somebody in the patio? There 
must be! Stone felt more keenly than ever the 
folly of this attempt. They could not expect all 
the jailers of the hacienda to be as fast asleep 
by day as those warders spellbound by the good 
fairy when Prince Charming rescues his princess 
from the ogre’s castle in the fairy tale. 

“What time is it?” asked Gertruda. 

Dan glanced at her in something close to an¬ 
noyance. How could the hour matter? He won¬ 
dered at the irrelevancy of this question from a 
woman who had lately shown herself so practical. 

“Time?” he repeated. 

“Yes. What time-” 

The Carib’s swathed head had been drawn back. 
It turned its broken nose in their direction. “Again 
all safe.” 

The girl sighed relief. “I thought so. It is the 
lucky hour of the siesta.” 

“You mean they’re napping?” asked the incredu¬ 
lous Dan. 


212 


MONEY TO BURN 


“But of course, all except the guards, and every¬ 
body thinks this door guarded. They have all had 
a little bread and a great deal of wine, the peons, 
and so they now repose themselves. It is their 
right. It is the one right that they have; they 
could not live without it.” 

Inwardly, Stone upbraided himself for his criti¬ 
cism of her. He was glad, even at such a crisis, 
that he had kept it silent. 

“Hurry!” said Luis. 

The admonition was unnecessary. They sped 
after him. 

Not a creature was visible as they began to 
descend the widening flight of steps to the patio. 
Except for the ever-moving fernlike branches of 
a Pride of India tree in the farthest corner, scarce 
a leaf stirred in the noonday heat. Assured that 
his fellow was on duty somewhere just beyond 
the palacio’s open door, a single guard sat asleep 
with his back against the trunk of a coconut palm. 
Don Ramon had reasonably built his reliance on the 
interior warders, and every one of the outside sen- 


LUIS’ MACHETE 


213 


tinels now relied, in tropical relaxation, upon the 
jungle as the best of secondary prison walls. 

“He sleeps sound, that one,” grinned Luis. 

“But we won’t run any unnecessary risks,” Dan 
said. “Walk softly!” 

They moved with caution down the top steps. 
Their footfalls roused no echoes. 

“Muerte al traidor!” 

A shriek. A shriek of terror, but a shriek as 
well—so those words seemed to Stone—admonitory. 
From inside the house it came, from the very cor¬ 
ridor that still yawned but a few feet behind and 
above the escaping prisoners, a raucous voice that 
shattered the lazy quiet with this cry of haste and 
alarm. It was as if the doorway itself vomited 
the shout. 

Dan wheeled. Nothing to be seen. 

He turned again. He began to drag the girl 
down the steps for a frantic dash onward. All 
this in the smallest flash of time. As he laid hold 
of her, she looked up and smiled. She incredibly 
smiled! 

“What-■” began Stone. 



214 MONEY TO BURN 

“It was Pedro,” said Luis and laid a reassuring 
hand on the American’s arm. 

“Pedro?” 

“The parrot,” explained Gertruda, “my uncle’s 
parrot.” 

Dan drew a long breath, hut though he arrested 
his pace, he was not wholly appeased. “It doesn’t 
matter what it is if it wakens that guard. 

It did not waken the guard, however. The 
dozing sentinel, long familiar with the bird’s noises, 
never budged from his repose at the foot of the 
palm. 

The trio of fugitives stood still to convince them¬ 
selves. The cry was not repeated. The tropical 
quiet had returned, the noon’s suspense of all per¬ 
ceptible motion monotonously continued. 

“Phew!” gasped Dan. 

Straight down on their heads poured the molten 
sun. The courtyard clay, pounded hard by the 
bare feet of one generation of peons after another, 
was set aglow with the heat until it looked like 
a bed of living coal. The dancing air was incan¬ 
descent; it burned the eyes. From human interfer- 


LUIS’ MACHETE 


215 


ence the fugitives might be immediately safe in 
the patio, but here and everywhere else where 
there was no shade, there lurked the deadly menace 
of the skies. 

“We can’t stand this,” Stone continued. “We’ll 
never get anywhere on foot. We’ve got to get 
horses somehow.” He addressed Luis. 

The Carib nodded. “But of a certainty, senor.” 

He led them by a devious way around the house. 
They left the cleared space for a grateful shade, 
a slim path that plunged among rioting convolvulus, 
a tangle of spice and lemon trees. 

“What’s this?” asked Dan. 

It was a rear approach to the hacienda’s stables. 
Presently he saw their roofs just topping the foliage. 
The low buildings appeared to be deserted. 

“Wait,” said Luis, and ran nimbly ahead. 

They saw him creep into the stables by a back 
door. Dan drew Gertruda among the deepest 
shadows. 

“If they’re not empty-” 

“They will be.” 

“But we haven’t a minute to spare!” 


216 


MONEY TO BURN 


The siesta concluded, Pena was sure soon to be 
missed and searched for by his fearful but faithful 
underlings. He would be found and released; pur¬ 
suit would result, inevitably and swiftly. Dan and 
the girl waited in anxious silence, Gertruda out¬ 
wardly calm but with a vivid flush upon her cheeks, 
her companion frankly chafing. 

Two minutes passed—and no sound came from 
the stables. 

Five minutes—the pawing of animals disturbed. 

The rattle of harness—sounds, but no sign. 

Then the rear door reopened. Luis appeared 
at last. He was mounted and drew two saddled 
horses after him, their bridles in his right hand. 

“I have left nothing but mules in the stalls,” he 
said. 

Almost at once, the party was riding slowly down 
the neglected avenue toward the hacienda’s wall. 
Hurry was as yet dangerous, but as long as they 
moved at a walk the overgrown roadway deadened 
all sound of hoofs. 

“The gate will be locked,” said Dan. “How 
are we going to manage that?” 


LUIS’ MACHETE 


217 


The Carib smiled grimly. “Let me ride ahead,” 
said he. “The gate is my business.” 

He dispatched it summarily. As they drew 
near, they saw the keeper sprawled under a clump 
of oleanders. Luis leaped from his horse, picked 
up a stone, vaulted hack into saddle and then 
threw his missile. 

When Columbus found the Caribs, they were 
experts with the sling, and marksmanship is one 
of the few talents that centuries of degeneration 
have left them. That stone took the sleeping man 
full in the face. It was small and lightly thrown, 
but it wakened him. 

He sat erect and rubbed his eyes. , 

“Halt!” ordered Luis to his little company. 

They all drew rein. 

The gatekeeper blinked. He looked up. He 
looked at the gate. Then, still in quest of the 
source of the projectile, he glanced up the drive. 

He saw them. He was an ugly fellow with a 
heavy scowl and an unduly large mouth. The 
stone had cut him slightly between the eye, and 


218 


MONEY TO BURN 


a trickle of blood ran down his nose. He sprang 
to his feet and whipped out a revolver. 

Instantly, Luis clapped heels to his horse. The 
animal bounded forward. Before the weapon was 
fired, the Carib was upon its owner. 

“Take this medicine!” he laughed. His machete 
flashed. “Una cucharada tres veces al dia!” 

The keeper had leaped aside, but not far enough. 
The machete descended. 

It was a brief but nasty business. The girl, 
realizing something of what was coming, had 
hidden her eyes. Even Stone did not care to 
look too closely. Luis searched the body and 
found what he sought—a key. 

The escaping prisoners took the road to the 
village. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


REJECTED SACRIFICE 


horror was past, but even yet they dared 
not ride too rapidly, for the hamlet lay close 
at hand. It was scarcely likely that Don Ramon 
would have taken any of its inhabitants into his 
' full confidence; still. Stone thought that there 
might be some one there who was intimate enough 
with the planter to be rendered doubtful by the 
unwonted spectacle of a party riding away from 
the hacienda in evident hurry. When Pena came, 
he would have nothing to lose by speed. 

“Phew!” 

Dan flicked the sweat from his forehead and 
wiped first one hand and then the other on a 
trouser leg. The second hand made those ten notes 
in his pocket crinkle significantly. He was a 
double fugitive, and he was both charged with 
killing and with having possession of counterfeit 
money. 


220 


MONEY TO BURN 


During the succeeding moment’s disgust, his im¬ 
pulse was to throw the false paper away, but sec¬ 
ond thought restrained him. Perhaps this evidence 
of Don Ramon’s nefarious business, an offense 
against a friendly nation, would secure its holder 
a readier hearing by the Domingan authorities. 

For Stone had resolved upon self-sacrifice. The 
girl, probably ignorant of law, and intent only on 
their escape from the hacienda’s dangers, did not 
guess the full extent of his personal peril and must 
never be aware, until too late to prevent it, of the 
full scope of his proposed immolation, lest she 
jeopardize—as, knowing in time, she infallibly 
would—all of her safety for some degree of his. 
Gertruda’s thoughts had to be kept from his own 
plight, because he had definitely decided to risk 
himself with the police in order to secure her from 
her embezzling uncle. 

His plan was plain, and if they could out¬ 
distance pursuit long enough, its execution ought 
to be simple. Luis must guide them by the brief¬ 
est way to freedom from Pena’s certain pursuit— 
the briefest way consistent with an avoidance of 


REJECTED SACRIFICE 


221 


encountering the homeward-bound Villeta. Once 
safe from the chase, or reasonably sure not to be 
overtaken and brought back before reaching the 
officers of the law closest within call, the course 
would be laid direct to the Domingan capital. There 
he would tell Gertruda’s story to the police—since 
his description had doubtless been sent out broad¬ 
cast and the lookouts were everywhere—this would 
be tantamount to surrendering himself for the kill¬ 
ing of Goldthwaite. 

He looked at the girl. She wore the mantilla, 
hut had forgotten to draw it lower than her hair. 
Her face was resolute, her chin held high; her 
black eyes shone. She was worth it! 

The horses were familiar with this portion of 
their route. At an easy jog, they threaded their 
way through the garbage and refuse of the single 
street. Most of the inhabitants were, however, 
still sleeping heavily; only a few barefoot and 
half-clothed native children, some dark with In¬ 
dian blood, more dark from the sun, stared at the 
cavalcade. 

Dan turned in his saddle to the Carib. “Will they 


222 


MONEY TO BURN 


carry any warning of our escape to the hacienda?’ 5 
He suspected spies everywhere. 

Luis was less dubious. “Why should they ?” 

“They’ll tell their parents that they’ve seen the 
senorita. They don’ % t see her often nowadays, 1 
suppose.” 

“They would no more dare to wake their fathers 
than I should dare to wake a sleeping watchdog, 
senor. And if they did, what do those fathers 
know? Pena’s wife lives beyond here. The danger 
lies not here. The danger will come when these 
children are questioned by Pena. They will point 
out our way to him; he will not have to ride 
through the pueblo slowly. If the hacienda servants 
had not Fernando, they would be helpless. If the 
senor had only let me kill him-” 

Dan interrupted: “Never mind that. There’s 
probably a warrant out for me, but I’m not up to 
first-degree murder even yet.” 

The Carib was pushing ahead rapidly, but Stone 
stayed him, though the village assumed a serpentine 
length that he found intolerable. The palm-thatched 


REJECTED SACRIFICE 


223 


cabins panted in the heat; flies and mosquitoes 
lazily buzzed outside the motionless jalousies. 
Mother goats, in the cool of the doorways, would 
summon their overly energetic kids from danger 
under the horses’ hoofs. 

It was finished at last. Quit of the village, Luis 
turned them into a jungle trail, along which they 
proceeded with what speed it permitted, the fear of 
pursuit always close behind them, the dread of 
they knew not what interference ahead. 

It was still possible for Dan to ride abreast 
of the girl, and he wanted to remain close to her 
as long as he could. Leave her he soon must, 
never to return—unless some miracle should clear 
his name. He thanked God that he had kept silent 
his love for her; he was even glad that he had 
not burdened her with any knowledge of the 
role she played in the heart of a man whom the 
world must regard and treat as a criminal, but 
he did desire her proximity as long as it was at¬ 
tainable, and he therefore kept close to her. 

She had not spoken for some time. Dan won¬ 
dered whether her thoughts were entirely occupied 


224 


MONEY TO BURN 


with the death of the gateman, yet he respected 
her reticence. Now, suddenly, she looked up, and 
his curiosity was almost immediately satisfied. 

“What,” she asked in her precise English, “is to 
be our destination?” 

He tried to smile. “Anywhere that Don Ramon 
is least likely to look. That’s up to Luis; he knows 
the country.” 

“But ultimately?” Her gaze was very steady. 

Stone’s, generally so frank, shifted. “I don’t 
know.” 

“You must have some plan.” 

“There wasn’t much time for planning. You told 
me to act and not think.” 

“We cannot go on like this forever.” 

As a high-school lad, he had read and loved 
Browning’s “Last Ride Together.” Now that phrase 
of hers set the poem’s concluding lines to ringing 
in his head: 

What if heaven be that, fair and strong 
At life’s best, with our eyes upturned 
Whither life’s flower is first discerned, 

We, fixed so, ever should so abide? 


REJECTED SACRIFICE 


225 


What if we still ride on, we two, 

With life forever old yet new, 

Changed not in kind, but in degree, 

The instant made eternity— 

And heaven just prove that I and she 
Ride, ride together, forever ride? 

He almost quoted the words, but he checked him¬ 
self and stammered: 

“I— we —I mean to get you to some reliable 
authority or other, somebody who’ll look after your 
rights, get your fortune out of your uncle’s fingers.” 

“I do not think that he has left much of it,” 
she said; “but even if he has, I prefer only that 
we escape from this island.” 

He felt her cool eyes reading his mind, but he 
made one more attempt at dissimulation. “Well, I 
hope to make your escape possible and to get your 
rights for you, too.” 

She spoke quietly: “Senor, the police are seek¬ 
ing you. If you go to the authorities on my be¬ 
half, you will be giving yourself up to them. It 
should go without saying that I will not permit 
such a sacrifice for any fortune whatever.” 


226 


MONEY TO BURN 


The blood mounted to Dan’s temples. Embarrass¬ 
ment choked him, but remonstrance struggled 
against it in his throat. What, however, would have 
been the issue he was never to know, for at that 
moment the Carib, riding ahead, flung up a warn¬ 
ing hand. 

“Listen!” 


CHAPTER XIX 


THE VAGABOND. 


HE trail had opened upon a small, natural 



A clearing in the jungle’s heart. It was walled 
by sour-orange trees and giant ferns. Ropes of 
vines hung, snakelike, from surrounding boughs. 
No spot could have seemed less usually frequented 
by humankind. The heavy carpet of moss muffled 
thq sound of the traveler’s progress, and no other 
sound reached Dan’s atentive ears. 

“Listen!” repeated Luis. He drew in his horse. 

Gertrude’s mount and Stone’s stopped still. To 
the American the perfect silence seemed continuous. 

“What’s wrong?” he inquired, yet he spoke be¬ 
low his breath. “I’m listening, all right, but there’s 
not anything to hear.” 

“There is,” said Luis. 

Dan looked inquiringly at the girl. 

She shook her head. “I don’t-” she began. 

Luis gestured a command that all talk cease. 


228 


MONEY TO BURN 


and then, sure enough, from somewhere ahead, 
from somewhere along the trail as it cut again 
into the jungle at the clearing’s farther side, there 
came the crackle of breaking twigs. 

The girl gasped: “My uncle?” 

“Your uncle,” said Luis, “does not go afoot.” 

“Somebody from the hacienda?” whispered Dan. 

Luis shook his head. “There is no trail there 
that connects with this one.” 

“Shall we go on?” 

“No. Wait and see.” The Indian drew his 
already stained machete. 

“Don’t use that!” cried Gertruda. 

Stone restrained her. 

Twigs crackled again. The footsteps were dis¬ 
tinctly audible now. They drew nearer. Then 
the escaping trio saw, approaching them, a vaga¬ 
bond pedestrian. 

On such a road at such a time even a beggar 
proved fit subject for mistrust. This one, as he 
paused at sight of the attentive group and gazed 
straight into Dan’s blue eyes, was ragged beyond 


THE VAGABOND 


229 


anything previously believable to Stone; beyond 
things believable the fellow was dirty, and beyond 
things believable he was known and knew. 

“Hoagland!” cried Dan. 

Luis looked at him. Was this friend or foe? 

Stone could not answer with words. He was 
half stupefied by the recognition. For an insane 
instant his instinct of self-preservation clamored for 
precipitate flight. Could Hoagland have followed 
him from the coast? How could he know of that 
roundabout journey to the hacienda? Dan pictured 
the prosperous-looking fellow standing in the shel¬ 
tered doorway of Sanchez and thence tracking Don 
Ramon as the planter went to buy clothes and fill 
prescriptions—the prescriptions that had so nearly 
saved Tucker’s life. Hoagland would probably 
like to put Dan in the hands of justice, but a 
surrender on the murder charge was part of 
Stone’s present enterprise, and here might be, at 
all events, an ally against the certainly soon-follow¬ 
ing Pena. The voyager of the Hawk was at least a 
fellow countryman. Dan could speak frankly to 


230 


MONEY TO BURN 


him and trust to his national sense of fair play. 
A motion told the Carib to lower his weapon. 

Dirt was caked upon the erstwhile Hoagland’s 
cheeks, and sweat ran through it in muddy gutters. 
He smiled. Was that the smile of a successful 
pursuer? Dan thought so, hut before Stone could 
speak the newcomer demanded: 

“What’s all this? A joy ride?” 

“It’s no joke,” said Dan, “and we haven’t got 
a minute to spare. If you were looking for me— 
well, I’m here, and it won’t be you I’ll run away 
from.” He spoke rapidly. “Turn around. Put 
a hand on my bridle if you like. We’ve got to 
hurry. If you’ll walk as fast as you can beside 
me, I’ll tell you all about it. We’re sure to be 
followed soon. You,” he broke out, “you must 
help—and you will if you’re a good American.” 

Hoagland’s eyes were keen. “I’m an American, 
all right,” said he. “As to whether I’m a good one 
or not, opinions differ.” 

“Then come along.” 

The Hawk's passenger took off his broad-brimmed 
native straw hat, disclosing to Dan, in a bow 


THE VAGABOND 


231 


toward Gertruda, the once familiar thatch of thin 
hair. 

“I think-” 

“No introductions now,” snapped Stone, and as 
the march was resumed, he continued: “You’ll 
want to know first about what I did on that ship, 
and, anyhow, what I did there is what got me 
into this new mess. Well, then-■” 

But again Luis interrupted, and again it was 
with a command to listen that he did so. He 
reached from his saddle and touched Dan’s arm. 

“Hush!” 

This time it came from behind them, from that 
stretch of the trail over which they had just 
passed, and this time it was immediately unmis¬ 
takable. Nothing afoot. Mounted men—mounted 
men advancing as rapidly as the jungle track 
allowed. It was the pursuit at last. 

“There they are!” said Dan. 

“They?” asked Hoagland. “Who?” 

There was no use in attempting to run away 
any farther; since a battle there must be, it had 



232 MONEY TO BURN 

better be here. Stone flung a rapid and sketchy 
explanation to his latest recruit: 

“When you were looking for me in Sanchez, 
you followed a big man in white—a planter—name’s 
Villeta. He’s a crook—all sorts. Robbed his niece 
—this girl here. I got her away. Now his people 
are trying to get her back.” 

As he spoke, Dan was looking to right and left. 
His party had not yet crossed the clearing; but he 
could see that the green walls of the open space 
were everywhere backed by a dense mangrove 
swamp, its depths doubtless breathing poison, its 
surface promising, at a short distance, engulfment 
to any trespasser. Gertruda might hide safely on 
its outskirts for a few minutes, abiding the issue 
of the now certain conflict, but the rest of them 
must stand their ground. 

Stone ordered the girl five paces—and no more 
—into the jungle. She reluctantly obeyed. The 
sounds of pursuit drew still nearer. 

“Got a gun?” he inquired of his fellow American. 

Hoagland nodded. 


THE VAGABOND 


233 


“Then draw off to the left there and use it from 
the flank. We haven’t anything but machetes; we’ll 
have to go to it hand in hand. If they get us two, 
you try to draw them after you. Break for the 
swamp on the opposite side from where the 
senorita is.” 

He translated, for the Carib’s benefit. His own 
mount he pushed to the extreme edge of the open 
space, covering the girl’s retreat, and he bade Luis 
follow him there. That last order was no sooner 
executed than the pursuers were upon them. 

Two—four—eight—ten—the enemy, muleback, 
swarmed into the clearing. Twelve! A success¬ 
ful resistance was probably as impossible as fur¬ 
ther retreat. Nothing to do but fight it out, any¬ 
how! They were coming without pause straight 
at their quarry; at their head and well in advance 
of the others, the liberated hunchback, perched on 
his saddle like a big doll, waved an automatic 
pistol and shrieked with triumph. 

Dan raised his machete. His nearer ally also 
made ready to strike. 

Pena was now not a yard distant from Luis, 


234 


MONEY TO BURN 


upon Stone’s right. The dwarf’s wild eyes were 
all for that deserter. 

“Traidor!” yelled Fernando. 

Another pound forward. The Carib struck, but 
struck too late. Pena, thrusting his pistol directly 
against the Indian’s broken nose, fired. 

Luis flung up his arms. He fell from his horse, 
dead. 

Dan prodded his own mount toward the hunch¬ 
back. As he did so, there came a volley of shots 
and a final rush from Fernando’s henchmen. He 
thought that, out of the corner of an eye, he saw 
Hoagland reel. The gang clashed all around; they 
closed in. Stone’s machete was straightway stricken 
from his grasp. 

Of course the fugitives had been hopelessly out¬ 
numbered. Stone caught sight of three peons head¬ 
ing into the swamp beside him; their trained eyes 
had, even in the high heat of warfare, caught 
some telltale sign. They were going to recapture 
Gertruda. Well, there remained the splendid op¬ 
portunity of dying barehanded in her defense. He 


THE VAGABOND 


235 


reined his horse about, broke through his nearest 
enemies and rode at the trio. 

And then an incredible thing happened. Some 
one jumped at him from behind. Before he could 
resist, his arms were pinioned to his sides and a 
voice—Hoagland’s voice—was shouting in easy 
Spanish to Pena: 

“If this is the man you’re after, I’ve got him 
only I think I ought to have a little reward for 
turning him over to you!” 


CHAPTER XX 


DOUBLE-CROSSED 

f TNDER the high window of Dan’s room a peon 
^ stood erect—or as erect as a peon can stand— 
a carbine resting in the crook of his arm. In the 
hall outside the locked door of that same apartment 
a pair of servants were on guard, and they carried 
automatics. Within, Dan sat, his aching head in 
his hands, his sick thoughts whirling dizzily from 
the treachery of Hoagland to the possible fate of the 
senorita. 

A key grated admonishingly. Swaggering like 
a hand-organ monkey, the hunchback marched in. 
His eyes were dull once more, and he smiled, but 
not even when he intended instant murder had he 
betrayed more malice. 

“The senor that captured you was hurt at the 
start of our little scuffle,” he said. “We owe him 
the reward of good care. You have not shown 
yourself a successful doctor with our Senor Tucker, 


DOUBLE-GROSSED 


237 


but you are all that we have—and so you are to 
attend this new patient.” 

His tone was a grating insult, his speech Spanish. 
Dan stared at him impassively. 

“Oh,” Pena mocked, “you can understand me 
well enough. I know it, for I heard you give 
orders to Luis in the dead room!” 

Stone bit his lip; but after all, these minor 
discoveries mattered nothing now. 

“How was he hurt?” he inquired in Fernando’s 
own language. 

“We do not know. We fear some internal in¬ 
jury. That, it is your business to discover—if 
you have the requisite skill.” 

Not Dan’s business, perhaps, but surely his un¬ 
pleasant duty. He rose. 

“Look here,” he said, “I’m going to attend to 
this fellow—not because I want to, for he double- 
crossed me, and not because you order it, for 
I’m past being afraid of you or anybody in the 
whole hacienda. You’ve got me and you’ll do your 
worst to me, whatever / do. No, I’m going to 
treat your friend because, though I couldn’t pre- 


238 


MONEY TO BURN 


vent your killing Tucker, I’m enough of a doctor 
never to refuse help. Only, don’t you think I de¬ 
serve a fee?” He resolutely bridled his pride. 
“Can’t you pay for my services with a little scrap 
or so of information?” 

Pena’s crooked smile more than ever distorted 
his yellow face. Most of us judge our fellows 
by the sole standard of ourselves; this creature 
could not conceive of a prisoner in Dan’s position 
as being anxious about any life except his own. 

“You want to know what is going to happen to 
you?” he asked; and he answered the question: 
“What will happen is almost certain, but perfect 
certainty awaits the master’s return.” 

“I don’t give a dominicano what happens—to me,” 
said Dan. “I want to know something about the 
Sehorita Gertruda.” 

He hated to mention her name in such a presence 
and might, indeed, have spared his pains. Fernando 
merely smiled the more—and the more evilly. 

“That also awaits the master’s word. Come 
now to your new sufferer. You are to employ 
your best skill with him, Senor Medico, for he is 


DOUBLE-CROSSED 


239 


the last patient you will ever have. There is no 
need of physicians in heaven!” 

With guards falling in before and behind, the 
hunchback conducted his prisoner to the room in 
which the New Englander had met his violent end. 
Any effort toward escape would have been futile, 
and unless it could help the senorita—which no 
effort now could do—Stone cared little enough to 
make one. Pena opened the fatal door. 

Poor Tucker’s body had been removed and Hoag- 
land lay on the bed—probably between the very 
sheets that had recently covered the dead man. All 
signs of disturbance were, however, removed and 
all signs funereal—the snuffed candles were re¬ 
stored to their usual place on the mantelshelf. 

Dan, disgust in every movement, approached the 
injured man. Whatever the hurt incurred by the 
Hawk's passenger, it seemed to he a severe one. 
There was no blood visible, but he lay with the 
relaxation of utter exhaustion. Stone studied the 
not ill-natured features under the thin mat of hair. 
It was hard to believe such a man a double dealer. 
Double dealer he had, however, patently proved him- 


240 MONEY TO BURN 

self, and the doctor could not curb a shudder of 
aversion. 

Standing close beside him, Pena saw it. You 
hate this man now?” he smiled. It was very 
pleasant to impose the unwelcome task. 

“I’ll do my best for him,” said Dan shortly. 

“Ah,” laughed Fernando, “I know you will— be¬ 
cause you hate him! Thus it is with you Ameri¬ 
cans. The more you dislike a work, the more 
you feel you should do it. Trust you, you 11 go 
through with it. I have always heard so.” He 
rubbed his hands together. “Well, then, having a 
multitude of preparations to make for my master, 
I shall not take the joy of watching you. Do 
you think the case serious?” 

“I’m no wizard,” Dan mumbled. “I can’t tell 
anything at the first glance.” 

“So?” said Pena. “Remember, your last patient! 
Make a fine job. You will have plenty of time. 
For double care of you, I shall lock the door, but 
there will be a guard outside of it with a key. 
Should you require anything, call. Do not be 
modest of your knowledge of our language; your 


DOUBLE-CROSSED 


241 


excellent Spanish will be well understood, never 
fear, Senor Medico.” 

He bowed with apish extravagance and impish 
irony. Dan could almost have found it in his 
heart to crush the poisonous creature as one might 
grind a venomous toad beneath one’s boot heel. 

Fernando left the room. The door was fastened. 

Then Stone shook off his loathing. He returned 
perplexedly to the injured man. 

Hoagland lay with closed eyes. The sheet was 
now slightly drawn back, and it revealed the fact 
that he was fully clothed. One touch showed that 
he had no fever, another discovered the pulse to 
be regular. Dan stripped off the patient’s coat, the 
better to examine for internal injuries. As he did 
so, he saw that something protruded slightly from 
an inner pocket. It was a small, flat leather case. 

Stone relentlessly opened it. Up at him, from 
under a glazed surface, there stared the certified 
information that Martin Patrick Hoagland was a 
special agent of the division of secret service, 
treasury department, U. S. A. 


“Eh?” 


242 


MONEY TO BURN 


That grunt of stupefaction was involuntary. Dan 
turned upon his patient. 

Hoagland was grinning broadly. He was even 
administering to his physician the wholesome medi¬ 
cine of a slow wink. 

“In Heaven’s name,” began Stone, “what’s the 
meaning of-” 

“That dwarf must be safe downstairs by now,” 
Hoagland cut in with a quick whisper. “I’m all 
right, of course. And don’t take what I did to 
you too seriously.” His voice carried no farther 
than Stone’s straining ears. 

Dan was still gasping. “Who are you?” 

“You’ve read that card.” 

“Yes, but then why did you do—what you did? 
And what are you doing here in Santo Domingo?” 

“Had to get inside this house somehow—some 
way that wouldn’t excite suspicion. Any means 
were fair, in the circumstances. Besides, they had 
us dead to rights out there in the jungle. I couldn’t 
help you, fighting four to one and everything in 
their favor.” 


“You might have told me- 


99 




DOUBLE-CROSSED 


243 


“There wasn’t time. Besides, I wasn’t sure of 
you and didn’t know I’d need you even if you were 
0. K. And then, you’ll kindly remember, you wanted 
to do the talking, and it was all about the little 
lady and yourself. No; I had my special job on 
hand. Why, it was on account of that—since 
you ask it and I’ll need you now—that I came 
to the island. You said this Ramon was all kinds 
of a crook. Well-” 

A light broke on Dan. “I know. I found it out. 

“I was right about you just now. You re the 
hoy I’ll need. Tell me what you want.” 

“They are printing counterfeit U. S. money,” 

“Well,” resumed Hoagland, “I got on the trail of 
some bank-note paper back home. It was to be 
shipped by the Hawk , and the Hawk was really 
booked for San Lorenzo, no matter what they said 
and no matter how much condensed milk they meant 
to take to other places later. I don’t know how 
deep Goldthwaite and his cross-eyed Johnson were 
in the thing—don’t know how much they knew— 
but I had a couple of men on the mate’s track 
in Brooklyn, and he didn’t look good to them. 



244 


MONEY TO BURN 


Down here, I found out that Ramon had to leave 
the landing of the paper and the first two land 
hauls to an agent—between stumbling over you and 
that runaway niece that he’d followed—oh, the 
Sanchez cafe keeper knew a little and talked more. 
Doctor Gurney! Why, Villeta had his hands full.” 
Hoagland groaned: “And then I had mine full. Gee, 
hut I’m stiff! I rode a mule till I killed it.” 

“But you can’t do anything in this house!” cried 
Dan, wildly waving the leathern case. “They’ll only 
kill you , too. They’ve killed a lot already—and 
I’m next! I don’t care about myself; it’s the girl 
I’m thinking of. I was on my way to give myself 
up for the Goldthwaite killing-■” 

Hoagland lifted his thin eyebrows. “Did you 
really think you did for that pirate?” 

Dan cried out. 

Hoagland put a cautioning finger to his lips. 
“Can the noise, sonny, and never mind the details. 
Goldwaithe’s as good as ever by now—or as bad— 
more’s the pity. And what’s more than that, your 
new boss knew it was so, or soon would be, when 
he hired you!” 


CHAPTER XXI 


THE TREASURY NOTES 

HPHE mission of Martin P. Hoagland to Santo 
**■ Domingo had its origin in the greatest shock 
ever received by certain officials not unconnected 
with the currency of the United States of America. 
As the secret-service operative told it to his pseudo¬ 
physician, there in the fortress of Don Ramon 
Villeta, the history was shorn until its remaining 
details constituted the barest statement of fact. 
What, however, had happened was a clash between 
temperament and system. 

Behind the high walls that protect the Gov¬ 
ernment Bureau of Engraving and Printing in 
Washington, an intricate regimen rules. Laws as 
stringent as ever those of Draco decree each move¬ 
ment of each employee for each second of his eight- 
hour day. Among the money printers everybody is 
inspected; every part of his job is checked up every 
minute. System commands it and system is 


supreme 


246 


MONEY TO BURN 


Now, concerning system, two things are axio¬ 
matic. First, the better the system, the fewer the 
permitted exceptions; next, when an exception is 
forced upon a system, from the outside, then, the 
better the system, the worse the confusion. With 
the former of these axioms, John H. Farley, in 
charge of the bureau, had been long acquainted. 
He had just passed his fifty-third birthday when 
the latter bumped into him. 

That year, the second of January, fell on a 
Tuesday and the bureau opened for business at 
nine a. m. When he had closed up shop at noon 
on Saturday, December 30th, Farley, lean and long, 
looked back on the thus concluded year with all 
the satisfaction of which his cautious nature was 
capable. This hook-nosed man with the worried 
air was head of the division that actually pro¬ 
duces America’s paper money; he was also a 
stickler for peace and quiet, and he had made 
good. 

No damaged plates, a minimum of reprimands to 
employees, scarcely any ink troubles, less than ever 
the usual number of dismissals, 72.5 per cent of 


THE TREASURY NOTES 


247 


first printings approved on initial inspection, and 
all deliveries on time—a commendable achievement. 
He could recall but one eruptive half hour, and 
that had been due only to his handsome, but ma¬ 
ture, stenographer: 

“I—I don’t see why I shouldn’t be assistant, 
instead of their running Mr. Dodd over my head!” 

She had grown from an awkward girl into a 
painstaking woman at the bureau, but she had 
yet to appreciate the fine ideal of the civil service 
board. 

“I’ve been here for years,” she sobbed. “I know 
the place inside out and I’m a lot more capable 
than Mr. Dodd is, but of course I’m only a woman, 
and all he has to do is pass an examination!” 

A woman. Somehow, except during one con¬ 
descending dinner at her boarding house, Farley 
had seldom before so considered her. He won¬ 
dered why, in spite of her undeniable good looks, 
she had always seemed as permanent a fixture 
of this office as its very vaults; it must be because 
she was so efficient. He debated whether, being 
a woman, she had suppressed the more painful 


248 


MONEY TO BURN 


prong of her grievance; whether her keen glance 
had seen that sentence relating to her in the annual 
character report that he submitted to the secret 
service: 

Greene, Cecilia: pvt. Secy: io yrs. in govt, employ; 
faithful, efficient, incorruptible, will never marry. 

On this morning of January 2d, however, Farley 
Shrugged the doubt away. His desk was open and 
in order, and, as far as her work was concerned, 
Miss Greene was her conscientious self again. 

Farley touched a couple of his desk bells. From 
opposite doorways two men appeared. Luther 
Lemmeli, long in the service, was little and fussy. 
Grantley Dodd was a bare thirty-five, broad and 
prosperous looking, with a gold chain conspicuously 
stretched across the curve of his already expansive 
waistline. 

“We’re going to begin the New Year by printing 
the first of the hundred-dollar Fillmore heads.” 
Farley stroked his jawbone between thumb and 
forefinger. “The engravers made a time record 
with their part of the job. The plates reached 


THE TREASURY NOTES 


249 


us”—he consulted an office memorandum—“at 
eleven twenty on Saturday. Now we’re going to 
beat the engravers. You gentlemen locked the 
plates in the safe”—again he consulted the memo¬ 
randum—“at eleven twenty-five. They’ll come out 
right now at—let’s see—nine ten. They’ll be on the 
presses in ten minutes—I’ve notified Gough about 
the make-ready—and we’ll have our first official 
printing under way at nine thirty sharp. Mr. 
Lemmell, will you please start the combination?” 

It was one of the laws of the great system 
that only three persons should have knowledge 
of a safe’s combination; one, Farley himself, hold¬ 
ing the entire key; the others, two trusted em¬ 
ployees—in this case Messrs. Lemmell and Dodd— 
who guarded one half apiece. At unexpected mo¬ 
ments, the combination was changed. The two 
men left the quiet office, and Mr. Farley turned 
to Cecilia Greene and began the dictation of routine 
instructions. 

He did not get far. Miss Greene was seated on 
the edge of the desk chair beside him, her pencil 


250 


MONEY TO BURN 


poised in air awaiting his sixth sentence, when 
Dodd and Lemmell rushed hack. 

“They’re gone!” 

Farley leaped to his feet. Miss Greene, pencil 
and notebook still in hand, leaped to hers. 

“Gone?” echoed Farley. “You mean the Fillmore 
plates are not in the safe where you put them?” 

Dodd’s large hands trembled; Lemmell nodded 
convulsively. Farley strode to the door. 

“Close the building!” Farley ordered his two 
assistants. “Get the secret service on the phone— 
Chief Boyle—then come back to the vault. I must 
make sure.” 

Miss Greene followed close at his heels. A 
glance over his shoulder revealed her interrogative 
eyes. 

“Yes, yes, come along,” said he. In the money 
factory everything is done more safely in pairs. 

The room to which they went was literally a 
steel room, and in their speed thither they brushed 
with no nod of recognition past the guard at its 
door. He was an old government servant, far 
above suspicion in this place where every one was 


THE TREASURY NOTES 


251 


more or less suspect; but—what was of greater 
weight—he would be the last man to know the 
combination of the big safe within. There was 
now no use in questioning him. Inside, however, 
the thick door of that safe stood open just as 
Lemmell and Dodd had left it in their frantic 
haste to communicate the news. 

“Bad, bad!” Farley groaned at this evidence of 
their carelessness. He and Miss Greene ran di¬ 
rectly to the yawning safe. 

“They were to put them here—in this main com¬ 
partment,” said Farley, touching the indicated shelf. 

His secretary had been far too long in the bureau 
not to be jealous of its honor. She peered this 
way and that with nervous, searching eyes intent 
upon a clew. The room was as vaultlike as al¬ 
ways, a series of steel walls, steel compartments, 
steel locks. It was not to be believed that any¬ 
thing could have been forcibly tampered with. 
Miss Greene looked toward the single entrance 
door; it was of course ajar, but the guard, his 
back scrupulously to them, leaned beside it, a 
barricade against intrusion. 


252 


MONEY TO BURN 


Then, suddenly, within the safe itself, something 
out of the ordinary must have caught the secre¬ 
tary’s scrutiny, for, while her chief leaned forward 
to the ravished shelf, she raised herself quickly 
to her tiptoes and reached far up over his bent 
back. From a high pigeonhole she pulled down 
a heavy package. 

“Mr. Farley!” she gasped. 

Before he gathered her meaning, Lemmell and 
Dodd pushed past the guard. 

“Chief Boyle is on the phone now, sir,” said 
Lemmell. “Will you speak to-” 

He stopped. Both newcomers stared at a small 
paper-wrapped parcel that lay in Miss Greene’s 
outstretched hands. She stood there, pale and 
swaying a little from the excitement of it. 

“They’re the Fillmore plates, all right,” cried 
the quickly exultant Dodd. “I know the shape-” 

“And I remember the wrapping paper,” said 
Lemmell. 

Farley had regained a degree of self-control. 
“You put them in the main compartment, didn’t 
you?” 



THE TREASURY NOTES 


253 


“Yes, yes!” declared both Dodd and Lemmell 
vigorously. 

Miss Greene raised her perfect eyebrows: “They 
were on the upper shelf. Oh, they are the Fillmore 
head, aren’t they?” 

Farley seized them and tore off the cover. “Of 
course they are!” He was saved. “And yet-■” 

“And yet,” blurted Dodd, “that isn't where we 
put them!” 

“No, sir,” Lemmell insisted. “We put them in 
the main compartment—just where you told us to, 
and just where you were looking.” 

“Are you both certain? You might be mistaken. 
They were on that upper shelf when we found 
them. Would you both swear you put them in the 
main compartment?” With his worried frown he 
scanned the two men’s faces. 

“I remember perfectly,” said Dodd, unabashed. 

“I’d swear to it,” declared Lemmell imperturbably. 

Miss Greene looked at Farley as if for a decision, 
but before he could speak Dodd’s hearty voice 
cut in. 


254 


MONEY TO BURN 


“Well, anyway, they’re found! We should worry. 
The incident’s over.” 

“Is it?” pondered his superior. “I wonder!” 

That was the prelude to Hoagland’s narrative as 
told to Dan at the palacio. This is what followed: 

One morning, a little more than a month previous 
to Dan’s desertion from the S. S. Hawk , a man who 
had never heard of young Stone, walked, as of 
right, into Mr. Farley’s private office. 

He was a large man with flat, red hair and a 
short but bristling red mustache. Importance de¬ 
clared itself even in the details of his well-cared- 
for clothes, which were all of one shade or another 
of brown. It spoke in his brown derby, his brown- 
braided coat, his brown-braided trousers. It shone 
in the polish of his neat tan shoes and was im¬ 
pressively evident in a tiny brown neckcloth 
meticulously tied. 

“Mr. Boyle,” said Farley, nervously pacing the 
floor, “you called me an alarmist when I sent for 
you about those Fillmore plates, and then found 


THE TREASURY NOTES 


255 


them within five minutes. That was on January 
2d. It’s now only March 1st—and look here.” 

Between trembling fingers he held out two one- 
hundred-dollar hills to the chief of the secret 
service. The chief looked questioningly for further 
enlightenment. 

“An hour ago,” continued Farley, “our man Dodd 
went over to the Marine Exchange Bank to see the 
president about a reissue of bank notes, and he 
had to wait for him a full twenty minutes while 
the banker was ‘in conference. 9 These financiers 
have no more respect for government officers than 
they have for bucket-shop sharks. Dodd decided 
to put in the time beside the receiving teller’s win¬ 
dow; he knows him slightly. While they two were 
talking, a depositor came in with a roll of bills 
and checks. Dodd wasn’t much interested, but as 
the man pushed the deposit through the cage, he 
noticed one of the new hundred-dollar Fillmore 
certificates. Something out of the ordinary struck 
Dodd about this one, and after the deposit had 
been made, he got the teller to give him a look. 


256 MONEY TO BURN 

He brought the note to me. We compared it with 
one of ours. It’s counterfeit, chief. 

Boyle, with the two specimens, went to a window. 
Through a magnifying glass he compared the cer¬ 
tificates. 

“If this note is bad,” Boyle gruffly declared, 
“then, with all due respect to the government en¬ 
gravers, the counterfeit’s a better job than the 
genuine article. When did you put them out? 

“Three days ago.” Farley wet his dry lips. 

“When’d you get the plates from the engraver?” 

“At eleven twenty a. m. on Saturday, the thirtieth 
of December last. They were brought direct to 
me by the messenger and were looked at by the 
people in my office, then at once put into the safe 
before closing time.” 

“Who were those people?” 

“Mr. Dodd, Mr. Lemmell and Miss Greene, my 
stenographer; but they are all trusted and abso¬ 
lutely above suspicion.” 

“Oh, sure! What I want to know is how the 
plates were put in the safe. Miss Greene take 
them there?” 


THE TREASURY NOTES 


257 


“Not at all. It’s not her place to do it. Dodd 
and Lemmell went with them. Both men insisted 
they deposited the plates, as I directed, in the 

front of the main compartment. They then, in 
each other’s presence, closed the safe, of which I 
had just changed the combination. According to 
rule, I next separately gave each man his half 
of the new combination.” 

“I see. On December 30th, you say. Then 

there were two days when the bureau was shut 

up. Could a copy of the plates in any way have 

been made here?” 

“Impossible!” 

“How about the engraver?” 

“He made only the one perfect set, as usual, 
and destroyed all the false starts in the presence 
of the regular witnesses.” 

“Then there’s only one answer. The plates 
must have been removed in some way and copied. 
Are you really sure of Lemmell and Dodd? Mightn’t 
they have pieced the combination together?” 

“They dislike each other. Lemmell has worked 
for the bureau over twenty years and feels that 


258 


MONEY TO BURN 


Dodd is an upstart. Dodd’s been in government 
service since he was fourteen years old—started as 
a senate page—and, though he’s been with us only 
six months, he’s got a splendid record. On his 
side, he calls Lemmell an old fogy and fussy and 
says he ought to be replaced by a younger man.” 

One by one, the two men and then Cecilia Greene, 
and even the stolid guard to the vault, were sum¬ 
moned and interrogated. The last answered the 
veiled questions that were put to him in an open- 
eyed wonder and frankness that at once slew 
suspicion. Each of the others satisfactorily ac¬ 
counted for his time between the hour of closing 
on December 30th and that of resumption of work 
of January 2d. Lemmell had spent his holiday 
in bed with a cold that he hoped to cure before 
the reopening of the bureau. Dodd took his young 
wife and baby to Atlantic City, catching the first 
train after noon by running and then having to 
run from the return express back to his work. 
Miss Greene went to a matinee on the Saturday 
afternoon. 

“A gentleman from our boarding house took 


THE TREASURY NOTES 259 

me,” said she dryly, and she looked at Farley; 
here was her way of telling him that she was 
unmarried entirely from choice. 

From the theater she had gone to her married 
sister’s at Alexandria, where she “tended the 
children” until Tuesday morning. This sister, it 
appeared, was then in hospital, and all possible 
help was needed at home with the babies. 

“That will do,” said Royle, dismissing her. He 
directed his next words to Farley. “We can tab 
up on all their statements, but I think they’ve told 
us the truth.” 

Farley made certain that the door was fastened 
before he answered. “Chief, there is only one man 
who knew the whole combination of that safe and 
could have removed the plates. That man is 
myself. I think it is my duty to offer my resig¬ 
nation to the secretary of the treasury.” 

The bell of the desk telephone interrupted him. 

“Hello!” said Farley info it, and then to his 
visitor: “It’s for you, chief.” 

In his turn, Boyle put the receiver to one ear 
and listened for a moment. Presently he said to 


260 


MONEY TO BURN 


Farley: “It’s headquarters talking—Hoagland, my 
right-hand man there. He’s got something from 
a company that makes paper for you. The con¬ 
cern’s been taking stock of their warehouses; 
they’ve just discovered the loss of three large rolls.” 

There was a tense moment in which the two 
men looked in amazement at each other. Then 
Boyle shook an advising finger in Farley’s gray 
face. 


“Stop printing,” said he. 


CHAPTER XXII 


COUNTERFEIT 

OO that’s that,” said Hoagland. 

^ “Rut it’s not all?” asked Dan Stone. 

Hoagland shook his head. There was one scene 
more. 

The mills of the gods grind slowly, but the 
mills of government are a close second. It was 
April 3rd in Washington before the affair of the 
Fillmore certificates came to the personal attention 
of the secretary of the treasury. 

The secretary, who had not before, even in 
writing, had the case in its entirety presented to 
him, listened with concentration while first Farley 
and then Boyle rehearsed their parts in the mystery 
of the lost-and-found plates and of the subsequent 
appearance of counterfeit money. 

The secretary was of the old school. He looked 
like a deacon, and, as a matter of fact, in his 


262 


MONEY TO BURN 


home town he was one. He was sixty, small and 
plump, with a genial pink face and effective side 
whiskers. His first move was to turn to Farley. 

“Of course,” said he, “your offer of resignation 
was very honorable, but of course it was hum 
what I might call too conscientious. Besides, it 
would attract attention—possibly invite questions. 
We shan’t consider it for a moment. Nevertheless” 
—he picked up and thoughtfully examined a single 
pencil astray in the ordered emptiness of his desk— 
“nevertheless, you must understand that this is a 
most unfortunate incident—most unfortunate, in 
view of certain hopes and projects of the adminis¬ 
tration” He tapped the pencil on his desk’s glass 
top. There was to be a presidential election in 
November. 

The long and lean Farley had been sitting holt up¬ 
right in an office chair. He now bent forward, 
his thin hands spread flat on his high, thin knees. 

“There are less than a hundred of the Fillmore 
certificates in circulation as yet, Mr. Secretary, 
and we have stopped all printing. Hadn’t we better 
recall the issue at once?” 


COUNTERFEIT 


263 


“Not at all! Not at all!” Mr. Secretary shook, 
his side whiskers vigorously. “Any such course 
at the present time would subject the government 
as a whole and this administration in particular 
to financial annoyance and political ridicule. Er— 
yes, that; and of course such a process would 
flatter criminals and encourage crime. To be sure 
it would.” He turned to Boyle. “Chief,” said he, 
putting all the force he possessed into his utterance, 
“these false plates must be found! You have got 
to ferret out the counterfeiters from their holes. 
You understand? There is no time to lose. Put 
every one of your men on the job, if you have 
to. It is essential that success be accomplished 
with the utmost speed and—er—lack of publicity.” 

Boyle’s red mustache contemplatively rose and 
fell over a tightly bitten, unlighted cigar. 

“We can’t do quite that, sir,” said he. “We’ve 
got a pretty good organization and will win out in 
the end; but we can’t speed up till we’ve a bit 
more to go on than we have now. This is an un¬ 
usual case. These crooks seem to have brains. 
They’ve covered up so well, so far, that all we’ve 


264 


MONEY TO BURN 


got to go on to date is that this doesn’t seem to 
be the work of any men figuring in our phony- 
money records.” 

The secretary was about to interrupt, but Boyle 
indicated that he had not finished. 

“Long before counterfeit was even suspected in 
this affair all possible finger prints on the safe 
were eradicated, and though we think that there 
was a removal of the plates from the safe, we 
have no actual knowledge of it. They were simply, 
according to two persons, placed on one shelf; 
after a couple of nights they were missed for 
five minutes by those same persons; and then, ac¬ 
cording to two other persons, they were found on 
another shelf. The only thing we’ve got to work 
on is the disappearance of a little paper—possibly 
mislaid or miscounted—and the appearance of 
counterfeit money on the market.” 

“Well, that’s plenty, chief!” said the now thor¬ 
oughly irritable secretary. “Take it off the market! 
Meanwhile, the treasury will be obliged to stand the 
loss.” 

“I get you, sir,” said Boyle, “and you can rely 


COUNTERFEIT 


265 


on us to do our best.” He drew a paper from his 
pocket. “The oddest thing,” he said, “is this: 
Here is the digest of reports from every hank in 
the country. That counterfeit note accidentally dis¬ 
covered by Dodd just after it was turned into the 
Marine Exchange Bank on March 1st, is the only 
one known to be in existence, and the depositor— 
a thoroughly reputable department-store owner— 
can’t tell where it came from. The banks report a 
few of the real notes—say, sixty or seventy. I 
haven’t counted them up, but that’s all they do 
report. It looks now as if the counterfeiters were 
resting, or had somehow or other been scared off. 
At any rate, not a single counterfeit Fillmore head 
seems to have been passed since that first one over 
a month ago.” 

“Curious! Curious!” declared the secretary. 
“Well, Mr. Farley, I believe I’d like to take a look at 
these two notes and compare them with some of 
your notes from the presses or with the plates 
themselves.” 

“As I reminded you, sir, we stopped printing 


266 


MONEY TO BURN 


a month ago, the moment we discovered counterfeit, 
and the plates are locked up in the vault. I can 
send for them.” Farley looked at the secretary 
for possible contradiction. “But here”—and he 
produced almost tenderly a wrapped note—“is what 
is perhaps easier for comparison for the layman. 
It is the certified standard bill struck off on 
December 30th.” 

“Ah, so much the better!” 

The three men, their heads bent close, examined 
all three notes under a large magnifying glass— 
first, the standard note, then the note in legitimate 
circulation, and then the counterfeit. 

Boyle gave a sharp cry. He actually removed 
the cigar from his mouth and shook it between 
thumb and forefinger in order to emphasize his 
words. 

“I told you the crooks’ job was better than 
yours, Farley,” said he. “Look here, both of you. 
There’s no blur on this scroll work in the upper 
left-hand corner of your standard note on the 
reverse side. Nor is that flaw in this thing which 


COUNTERFEIT 


267 


you call the false note. It appears only on what 
you call the good notes, of which, by casual 
count, I estimated there are between sixty and 
seventy reported by the banks.” 

“Well?” asked the secretary, puzzled. 

“Well?” echoed Farley, with dawning suspicion. 

“Can’t you see?” the chief shouted. “Can’t you 
see that Dodd’s discovery was the biggest sort of 
accident? Why, what he reported as bad is actually 
good, and there’s nothing now in circulation but 
counterfeit!” 

“That’s the way the chief put the case to me,” 
said Hoagland, concluding his rapid chronicle to 
Stone, “the way he put it to me when I’d come 
in to report on the trailing of the paper to New 
York and our blue-nosed friend Goldthwaite’s 
Hawk” He winked solemnly to his superfluous 
physician. “So I took a sea trip, and you saved my 
life, and, remembering how one good turn deserves 
another, I handed you over to these merry gun¬ 
men.” 


268 


MONEY TO BURN 


“Oh, well,” said Dan, “you thought you had to 
get in here, and that was one way. It seemed a bit 
strenuous to me, that’s all. But the question now 
is: What are we going to do here, shut up like 
this?” 

“We shut up?” The man on the bed chuckled. 
“Those guards outside are your guards; it was en¬ 
tirely on your account that Pena said he’d lock the 
door. He considers me a friend! Of course, he’d 
have got you anyhow—and trust him to say so!— 
hut the fact remains that I did turn you over to 
him.” 

“You think you can help her?” asked eager Dan. 

“Her? Oh, the little lady? Perhaps. Perhaps I 
can get a chance to help you, too, if nothing hap¬ 
pens in the meanwhile to give me away here. 
Then, once I’ve got this Ramon fellow copped-” 

“But how can you get him?” 

Hoagland continued: “And speaking of not be¬ 
ing given away, it won’t do to go flourishing that 
card about. Suppose you just hand it back to me.” 

Throughout the narrative, Dan had been thought- 



COUNTERFEIT 


269 


lessly holding Hoagland’s leathern credential case. 
Now, to return it, he extended it to its owner. 

“Look out!” whispered Hoagland 

For the card did not reach that owner. Preparing 
for some such surprise as was at this instant car¬ 
ried out, the crafty Pena had lied. The door of the 
room was not locked. 

It swung open, and, with an amazing lightness, 
Don Ramon hounded in. He flicked the credentials 
from Dan’s unwarned fingers. 

“Thanks—thanks, Senor Medico! A cigarette?” 
His loud, derisive laughter rang to the ceiling. Then 
he opened the case. The briefest look sufficed him. 
“Ha! Not cigarettes, after all.” 

He shot a glance at Dan, whose lips were tight 
—at Hoagland; but Hoagland, at this intrusion, had 
sunk back upon the pillows, and there, as the ill- 
starred Tucker had once done before him, was 
simulating unconsciousness. The huge planter drew 
back a pace. 

“So this is your little game, is it?” he purred 
at Dan. “Fernando was right, then. He is always 


270 


MONEY TO BURN 


right. You are a secret-service agent of the United 
States come to spy upon my poor house, Senor so- 
called Medico!” 

He spread his fat hands wide and moved back 
the fraction of a step farther. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


UNDER THE HOOFS 

gTAY there! I will myself kill this fellow!” 

Villeta flung the words over one massive shoul¬ 
der to the guard in the hall, kicked the door shut, 
and then, with the added force of momentum, rushed 
upon Dan. 

It was the charge of a rhinoceros. Falling before 
it, Dan was caught and enveloped in a mighty grasp 
that crushed him against Don Ramon’s broad breast, 
while one of the hands that had torn the jungle 
serpent’s head from its body gripped both of Stone’s 
wrists and bent his arms straight backward from 
the shoulders. Victim and attacker struck against 
the bed. 

Then the invalid Hoagland suffered a sudden con¬ 
vulsion. The sheet that partially covered him sailed 
four-square into space; it rode the air of battle and, 
descending, enmeshed both the combatants. A third 
combatant hurtled after it; the patient threw him¬ 
self upon Villeta’s shoulders. 


272 


MONEY TO BURN 


But Ramon’s weight had deceived the detective. 
Both here and in Sanchez it had seemed to Hoag- 
land to be nothing more than the flabby fat of the 
heavy eater. Now he was to discover that under¬ 
neath this soft outer layer worked, unretarded, 
muscles like the muscles of a crossroads black¬ 
smith. 

Try as he would, strain as he did, the secret- 
service operative, himself no weakling and always 
in trim, could not rend the planter’s titanic hold 
from the nearly snapping arms of Dan. Had it not 
been for the confusion of the suffocating sheet, from 
which both Stone and Villeta struggled to free them¬ 
selves, Don Ramon would not have let go at all; 
but the entangling folds of linen choked him, and, 
as Hoagland guessed this advantage, the secret- 
service man decided to use it to the utmost capacity. 
He pulled the sheet tighter about the tossing head 
of the taller of the two concealed men. 

Ramon, half gagged and half smothered, could 
not call out, and, in order to breathe adequately, he 
must loose his hold on Dan. He fought the alterna¬ 
tive bitterly, but at last let go and dropped to his 


UNDER THE HOOFS 


273 


knees. He pushed his great body first to the right 
and then far to the left, knocking over both his 
assailants. Fuming and sweating, he sprang up¬ 
right and twisted the sheet into a ball, which he 
tossed to the bed. 

After all, he had been too quick for Hoagland. 
Jhe alteration of position was a thing accomplished 
in the merest flash of time. Before the two Amer¬ 
icans could realize the speed with which his man¬ 
euver was enacted, they were being dragged by the 
backs of their necks toward the hall, the door of 
which was reopened in answer to a kick from Don 
Ramon’s heavy riding boots. With a contemptuous 
snort at the dazed guard, his master bellowed 
for better help in the removal of his prisoners. 

“ Socorro! Socorro!” 

His bawl echoed through the palacio. From the 
floor below, running footsteps sounded. They 
sounded nearer. They were ascending the narrow 
stairs. The sentry at the door, whose noninter¬ 
ference had once been commanded, showed signs of 
convalescing intelligence. Villeta, Dan, and Hoag¬ 
land were just around the turn of the door when 


274 


MONEY TO BURN 


Dan, falling forward, managed to grasp one of his 
captor’s ankles. Don Ramon was caught in mid¬ 
stride; he tumbled with a resounding bump. 

Heavy men are hard to throw, but, if they are 
thrown, it is heavily. For one instant Villeta lay so 
still that the sentry’s whole mind was given to him, 
and during that broken moment, the Americans 
scrambled to their feet and stared at each other. To 
run forward now would be to run into that on¬ 
coming help which was clamberng up the stairs. 
Dan, quicker in this crisis than Hoagland, dragged 
at the latter’s sleeve and pointed within the room. 

When Don Ramon had last kicked that door, its 
key dropped from the lock; it lay now a yard be¬ 
yond the sill. Dan pulled the detective to it. They 
slammed the door just as a recovered Villeta flung 
himself against the barrier. Pressing with all their 
strength upon their side of the oaken panel, they 
managed to hold until Dan had turned the key. It 
was a strong key set in a strong lock. Once, per¬ 
haps, it had secured other prisoners in that room. 
The present prisoners were thankful for its tem¬ 
porary protection. 


UNDER THE HOOFS 


275 


Hoagland produced a pair of automatics and put 
one into Dan’s hands. 

“I oughtn’t to have given myself away,” he mut¬ 
tered; “but I thought that dago was going to kill 
you, my friend.” He pointed to the proffered weapon. 
“I didn’t want you to have this down there in the 
jungle,” he said with the vacant stare that Dan 
had noted on the Hawk . “But—oh, boy—I want 
you to have it now!” 

“Why didn’t you—didn’t you use it—on him?” 
Stone panted. He nodded toward the door and in¬ 
dicated the invisible but more than audible planter 
who was hammering at its farther side. 

“The first rule of our service,” Hoagland smil¬ 
ingly explained, “is never to shoot while there’s 
any chance without it.” Villeta’s blows redoubled; 
the treasury agent grew serious again. “And now,” 
he concluded, “I think you and I are getting to the 
last chance.” 

Again and again Ramon pounded on the door; 
more and more steps thumped up the stairs and 
came nearer and nearer along the hall. Villeta 
cursed the guard, then roared incisive orders. He 


276 


MONEY TO BURN 


called for guns, machetes, for all his adherents, and 
for Fernando—above all, for Fernando. 

Over the turmoil the hunchback’s shrill voice 
sounded finally in answer, from far below. “At 
once, Don Ramon! At once!” 

Dan drew Hoagland to the window. “You’re 
right,” said he. “Look!” And he pointed mean¬ 
ingly straight down the precipitous outer wall. “We 
can’t make it that way; never in the world! And 
we can’t escape by the door—and the door can’t 
hold forever. We’re trapped. It’s only a question 
of time!” 

The secret-service man, one eye on the reverberat¬ 
ing portal, tapped Dan’s shoulder : 

“A question of time; that’s just it. We must hold 
out as long as we can. But even then-” 

A roar and a smash interrupted him. Don Ra¬ 
mon’s peons had arrived in force. Their machetes 
hacked at the door; their pistols shot through it. 

“A minute or two—not more. Listen to that!” 
Dan spoke between the noise of the blows. “And, 
if they can’t work fast enough this way, they’ll rig 
up some sort of battering-ram.” 


UNDER THE HOOFS 


277 


The wood was already splintering. Through the 
thinnest of the paneling the flash of a peon’s evil 
blade gleamed among the splinters. 

After that there was no more talking against 
the pandemonium. Hoagland gestured to Dan to 
stand close to the doorpost on one side. He posted 
himself on the other. He released the safety catch 
of his own weapon and held it cocked for the tu¬ 
multuous moment of the enemy’s entrance. Dan 
sedulously and resolutely imitated his companion’s 
grim prepartions. 

Crash! The wood seemed breaking at all points, 
and yet somehow the door as a whole still held 
firm. Hoagland lifted his left arm and examined 
the watch that he wore upon his wrist. 

“We must keep them back as long as we can!” 
he shouted; but, through the din of the battering, 
the younger man was forced to guess at what he 
said. 

Then came the end. With a rending lunge the 
door fell inward and, after it, pell-mell, pitched the 
vanguard of the dark attackers. 

The first two dropped at the first two shots from 


278 


MONEY TO BURN 


either side of the doorway; but what followed was 
wholly indiscriminate. Instantly the room was full 
of men and gray smoke, pierced by the dull red of 
explosions. Don Ramon climbed over a pair of 
bodies and, seeing Hoagland first, hurled himself at 
the secret-service operative, seizing his wrist and 
trying to wrench his opponent’s pistol free. A couple 
of other men shouldered after him and fell on Dan, 
who shot one, hut missed the other; he did not 
greatly care so long as Villeta and Pena remained 
alive to threaten Gertruda—and Pena had not yet so 
much as appeared. 

The doorway was narrow. The attackers, crowd¬ 
ing hard and without order, had to come in only 
three at a time. An ugly fellow with lopped ears 
postured at the threshold and flourished his ma¬ 
chete. Hoagland saw him and, raising his wrist 
despite the pressure Don Ramon had on it, fired; 
one earhole became a slash of blood; the man howled 
and fell, and so held back for a moment those be¬ 
hind him. 

Thus matters stood when from outside the room, 
outside the house itself, a sound that was new beat 


UNDER THE HOOFS 


279 


through the noise of assault—the galloping of 
horses. There rose a shriek below stairs, which 
Dan knew must be Fernando’s. Pena, perhaps de¬ 
laying to rally all the peons, had inexplicably not 
yet come up in answer to his master’s command! 

Ramon, amid the turmoil of the fight, stood at 
pause and listened. 

“I knew they wouldn’t be a minute late!” Hoag- 
land’s shout broke the second’s lull. “It’s the con¬ 
stabulary. 

To all save three of the crowd those English 
words meant nothing, but to Dan and Don Ramon 
they came, though so differently, as the magic words 
that break a spell. Suddenly no longer restrained, 
Stone burst free with a yell of triumph and battered 
his way toward the door, his sole thought the 
rescue of Gertruda. 

Villeta’s eyes started as if they would roll from 
his head. He backed rapidly, cursed a peon who 
was trying to aid, and, roaring “Vaya!” he flung the 
living obstacle aside, kicked his way over the block¬ 
ade of bodies, and dashed from the room and down 
the staircase. 


280 


MONEY TO BURN 


By now Dan also had vanished. The leaderless 
peons stopped, turned, and stared after Villeta, 
open-mouthed. Then, with a babel of cries and a 
savage disregard of their dead and wounded, they 
fled in their master’s wake and followed him down 
the stairs. 

Hoagland had rushed to the window. He had 
been right. The patio was full of armed men, and 
more were galloping up—helmeted natives, officered 
by Americans. He threw his arms high over his 
head and addressed the universe: 

“Didn’t I tell you it was only a question of 
time!” 

Then horror trod upon the heels of exultation. He 
shuddered. 

For down in the patio an ugly thing happened. 
Having scented trouble ahead of his master, and not 
wishing to share it, the hunchback had all too 
tardily attempted an escape. Unsightly as he was, 
he had—as Don Ramon had told Stone in the course 
of his extenuation of the hunchback’s actions—a 
wife in the neighborhood of the village, and, wicked 
as he had abundantly proved himself to all the rest 


UNDER THE HOOFS 


281 


of the world, her, in his crooked way, Pena loved. 
He understood the significance of the approaching 
hoofs; he guessed flight imperative, but without this 
woman he would not try it. He might have cut 
across to the farther side of the plantation and made 
alone for the Haitian interior; instead, he thought 
to slip between the raiders and secure his wife 
before any escape proper could be begun. Terror, 
however, poisons acumen. Fernando, in his panic, 
miscalculated the distance of the charging con¬ 
stabulary. 

As he reached the patio’s edge, the first four 
horses galoped in. Their hoofs just missed his 
diminutive figure. He ducked this way and that. 
He swerved; he slipped. He fell to his knees. The 
next four animals crushed his shrieking form in the 
dust of the avenue. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


FLAME 

p\AN, dear, but I assure you” said the Senorita 
Gertruda; “and you can yourself see my feet, 
that they have not been cut off. I can walk per¬ 
fectly.” 

He had found her in her own room, after wildly 
searching a dozen others, deserted by the appointed 
guards who had run off in answer to Don Ramon’s 
summons of assistance. Having once lifted her in 
his arms, he was now carrying her through the 
door that, from the ground-floor hall, opened to the 
patio. 

“I don’t care,” said Dan. “I don’t want ever to 
let you go.” 

“Only,” she persisted, “I have not been at all 
harmed, I assure you!” 

“And you never shall be, thank God!” 

“Because doubtless,” the girl laughed, “these of¬ 
ficers and men here will aid you to defend me.” 


FLAME 


283 


This took his eyes from her, and he realized that 
he was now facing a crowded compound in which 
stood not a few of his uniformed fellow country¬ 
men. She blushed as he put her down; he blushed, 
too, as an officer of the constabulary came up to 
them. 

“Mr. Hoagland asked me to tell you, sir, that the 
house is now safely surrounded. Most of the peons 
are already in custody.” 

“You—you’re really American?” stammered Dan. 
“United States American?” 

“Oh, altogether, sir!” 

“In Santo Domingo?” 

The questioned man frowned slightly. “I’m 
afraid,” he said, “that you’re like most of the people 
back home. Hardly any of them know that United 
States citizens have been officering the constabulary 
just about ever since Mr. Roosevelt took over the 
customs for us.” 

He was right. Dan was like most Americans. 
He contritely admitted having heard of the historic 
change and then forthwith forgetting it. He recol¬ 
lected that Don Ramon had, for the most part, care- 


284 


MONEY TO BURN 


fully kept him to the back streets of both San 
Lorenzo and Sanchez. Of course he had seen no 
sign of the new order. 

“And Hoagland sent for you?” 

“Yesterday—a wireless to Puerto Plata—from the 
only wireless station within twenty miles of here.” 

Dan sniffed at the still air. There was the scent 
of something burning. 

“Where’s he now—Hoagland?” 

“He’s looking for the owner of this hacienda. 
What is his name? Villeta? It seems the fellow 
came down the main stairs, but he never showed 
up here, so he must have got out back, or else 
he’s gone up again by some other way.” 

Dan shouted. “Why, good heavens, he’s in the 
chapel, of course!” 

The officer smiled. Was this interlocutor crazy? 
“Saying his prayers?” he asked. 

“No, no! You don’t understand, and I hadn’t 
time to tell Hoagland that part, of it. I only told 
him I knew what their game was.” Dan all but 
forgot Gertruda. He seized the officer’s shoulders. 


FLAME 


285 


“Why, it’s all there in the chapel, the presses, the 
fake money and-” 

A sweating Hoagland rushed up to them. Some¬ 
thing of what Stone said he had caught; in his 
turn, he began to shake Dan. “Where’s the chapel? 
Where is the chapel?” 

Dan surrendered the senorita to the officer’s care 
and, followed by the secret-service agent and a 
score of men, led the way at a run. As they ad¬ 
vanced, the scent of things burning grew more 
pungent. 

“He’s burning up the money!” cried Stone. 

“I don’t give a whoop about the money!” panted 
Hoagland. “What I’ve got to get is the plates. In 
a counterfeiting case, as long as the plates 
exist-” 

His breath nearly stopped, and his words stopped 
altogether. Dan, running well ahead, remembered 
that, during his visit to the chapel, he had not once 
thought about the plates. 

The heavy door was unlocked. Whoever was in¬ 
side had wasted no time in securing it behind his 




286 


MONEY TO BURN 


entrance. Stone tore it open. A cloud of smoke 
rushed out and on it flapped a squawking bird. 

“Muerte al traidor!” 

Don Ramon, in his extremity, had not forgotten 
his pet; but now Pedro deserted him for the less 
stifling atmosphere of the hot afternoon. The par¬ 
rot flew, still squawking, into the jungle. 

The attackers rushed inside. A slow smoke was 
filling the transept from the rickety confessional 
box. Originating in the counterfeit hundred-dollar 
bills, the fire had already spread outward. The 
woodwork was crackling close to the body of the 
peon, who was stretched there, staring at the vaulted 
roof and seeing nothing—the only disinterested fig¬ 
ure among them all. 

Hoagland tore away a handful of the charring 
paper and stuffed it into a coat pocket. As he did 
so, three shots out of an automatic pistol flashed 
from behind the altar and spattered against the 
west wall above the raiders’ heads. 

Dan looked back toward the way by which he had 
entered. 

“The plates!” shrieked Hoagland, divining his 


FLAME 


287 


purpose while it was yet but half formed. “Never 
mind the man! The plates are worth more’n their 
maker. Why-” 

But Stone, with quick decision, zigzagged a path 
among his new-found allies. He had a score of his 
own to pay. He ran across the patio and into the 
now deserted house. 

He tore upstairs. He rushed light-footed along a 
gallery and so came, with quick stealth, upon the 
balcony over which he had thrown the peon who 
now lay dead there on the chapel floor. 

Dan looked down over the rail. In spite of the 
rising smoke, he could now see Don Ramon quite 
clearly. Behind the altar and through its marble 
tracery, the pseudo-planter was taking careful aim 
at the constabulary. He had probably made his 
way to the chapel by a roundabout course after 
passing through a back door of the palacio; he never 
dreamed of looking up. 

From the east end of the balcony it was a long 
diagonal leap to the shoulders of Villeta below. Dan 
measured the distance with precision. Could he 
make it? He climbed upon the rail and poised 



288 


MONEY TO BURN 


there; into his mind flashed the memory of how he 
had poised before his plunge from the Hawk. Be¬ 
low, the eyes of the armed men were raised to him, 
but Hoagland gestured them to silence, and the em¬ 
battled counterfeiter—the man who had kept Ger¬ 
truda from her inheritance—peeped only at those 
of his enemies who were on his own level. 

Balanced as if for a dive into some quiet swim¬ 
ming pool, Dan counted the number of yards and 
the angle he must cover if he hoped for anything 
but death or maiming on the chapel pavement. Ra¬ 
mon’s huge, forward-bent back presented a clear but 
perilously far-away landing place, a landing place 
only just possible of achievement. 

Stone made the dive. The wind of his passage 
whistled in his ears. His heart seemed to stop 
beating. 

But he had not calculated erroneously. Like a 
missile from a skillful sling, he struck his goal, 
safely between the sharpshooter’s shoulders. The 
impact was tremendous. Both the human bullet and 
its human mark rolled, dazed, upon the tiles. 

When Dan sat up, the invulnerable giant, Ramon 


FLAME 


289 


was surrounded by the raiders and was shrugging 
his recognition of the fact that the time was over¬ 
ripe for surrender. 

“You appear to have captured me,” said he to the 
most zealous of his guardians. “Don’t point your 
revolver like that. It might go off. Never fear, I 
shall accompany you quietly.” 

Through the gathering smoke, Hoagland was anx¬ 
iously examining the machinery in the center aisle 
while the one group of constabulary who were not 
busy watching Don Ramon set themselves to putting 
out the fire. 

“Where are the plates?” the secret-service agent 
again demanded. “I’ve got to have those counter¬ 
feit plates, Mr. Villeta.” 

Don Ramon only smiled. 

The plates were not inside the burning con¬ 
fessional box. That was soon evident. Looking on 
detachedly at the fevered search, Villeta bit his 
nails and shook his head as if he were in no posi¬ 
tion to offer enlightenment. 

Hoagland ran up to Don Ramon. He shoved for¬ 
ward an enraged fist. 


290 


MONEY TO BURN 


“Will you tell me where you’ve hidden those 
plates? You know we’ll have our troubles with a 
jury unless we find ’em, and you know they’re 
more dangerous at large than you are! Where have 
you hidden them?” 

Villeta fairly beamed. “Senor, I have no idea 
of what it is that you are talking.” 

“Shall I kill you, or will you tell me?” 

Ramon knew that for a bluff, and he displayed his 
knowledge laughingly. “You shall kill me.” 

The bluff was fairly called. Hoagland tossed his 
thin-thatched head and turned away. Throughout 
Dan’s dash to the balcony he had, under the ham¬ 
pered sharpshooter’s fruitless fire, ransacked half 
the chapel. Now the second half had been vainly 
scoured. Yet the operative was decided that these 
imperatively important pieces of metal were some¬ 
where under this groined roof. 

They must be. All the work had been accom¬ 
plished here, and the place had been kept more se¬ 
curely locked than the chief counterfeiter’s own 
bedroom could have been. 


FLAME 


291 


Hoagland wheeled on Dan. “You’re a lot of help, 
you are!” he vociferated. He had to expend his 
chagrin on somebody. “You’ve made a lot of use of 
your opportunities, I don't think. Found out every¬ 
thing that I’d guessed beforehand. Turned up a lot 
of junk that I didn’t half need.” One would have 
thought that he had especially commissioned Dan to 
come here. “Oh, I wired home for your record and 
got it all right. Studied medicine and played with 
church architecture. If you had to play with some¬ 
thing, why didn’t you pick a thing that could be 
of some use now?” 

It was the old taunt. It was, in effect, the gibe 
against Dan’s father that the Pennsylvania-Dutch 
lawyer had launched at the boy when the elder 
Stone’s estate was settled: “Your pop was the kind¬ 
est-hearted man as effer lived, but he hadn’t an eye 
fer money yet. If you want to git along, boy, keep 
your fingers off’n print.” 

And it stung his father’s son to action. Mar¬ 
velously, he remembered that single detail of the 
old books on ecclesiastical architecture which solved 


292 MONEY TO BURN 

the pressing problem of his government’s present 
quest. 

“I’ve got it!” he said. 

Hoagland fairly shook him. “Got what? 
Where?” 

“The plates. Don’t! You’re hurting my shoulder 
where Pena bit it! I mean I know where they are. 
Listen! In every Catholic altar there is a piece of 
metal or a thin mortared stone—the altar stone 
that covers a cavity. They put relics of a saint in it. 
This chapel’s not used now, but the altar stone— 
that hole —that must be here; it’s just the place. 


Look in it!” 


CHAPTER XXY 


THE BUENOS AIRES WOMAN 

IN the tonneau of his big limousine—one of the 
* largest in Washington—the usually genial secre¬ 
tary of the treasury displayed a troubled frown, 
while, so close to his face that the breath of that 
neighbor’s speech rustled his gray side whiskers, he 
listened to the deductions of the chief of the secret 
service. 

“It’s all a process of elimination,” said Boyle, 
chewing his cigar emphatically. “Fm sorry for poor 
old Farley, and, except by elimination, we can’t 
get a thing on him. But somebody’s got to be the 
goat, or the administration will catch the Old Harry. 
These fake notes are all over the place. There 
aren’t so many of them, but they’re scattered about 
everywhere, and the rumor’s got out about them— 
only on the inside of course, but out , all right— 
and the plain fact is that there isn’t any clew as to 
how they got there. Well, then, Farley had and has 


294 MONEY TO BURN 

facilities that nobody else could have, and that’s all 
there is to it!” 

The chief was always direct. He believed in go¬ 
ing straight to the point, however brutally. So 
when the pair arrived at their destination and were 
finally ushered into Farley’s private office, he gave 
that gentleman eye for eye. 

Not so the little secretary of the treasury. One 
sidelong glance showed him the drawn pallor of the 
suspected man’s careworn face and the stoop of his 
shoulders, which recent worry had forced there. 
The secretary kept intact the genuine heart of the 
old-line politician; he kept it firm, hut in the right 
place, and so he now blustered in his fussy manner 
to cover a regret quite honestly poignant. 

“Mr. Farley,” he finally began, “the government, 
as you are well aware, is most disturbed. You’ve 
no good news, I fear, in this—er—Fillmore note 
paper?” 

Farley shook his tired head. 

Boyle continued to regard the superintendent 
steadily through his sharp eyes that never wa¬ 
vered. 


THE BUENOS AIRES WOMAN 


295 


“The treasury department,” said its secretary, 
“has come to a standstill in the affair. We’ve—well, 
we’ve—well, we’ve just got to throw up our hands.” 

“You mean-” 

The secretary blew his nose. He had a way of 
blowing it ostentatiously when he was worried. 
“Public disgrace threatens us,” said he. “That’s 
what it amounts to. Things can’t be hushed up in¬ 
definitely. Every bank in the country knows, and 
when things are once known privately, it’s never a 
long time before they are known publicly, too. The 
coming elections, if I may speak quite openly-” 

“Do, please,” said Farley. “But I understand 
what you’re driving at.” He passed a hand across 
his eyes and tried to smile. “You mean that—that I 
must go.” 

Boyle clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m glad 
you take it that way!” 

But Farley was no fool. He guessed, suddenly, 
what lay behind the chief detective’s masquerade of 
good-fellowship. To pay the disciplinary penalty 
for an executive error was one thing, but to be 
suspected of overt crime was another. Crime— 


296 


MONEY TO BURN 


after his long life of denial, of hard devotion to 
routine duty—after his record that bore only this 
single blot! His cheeks turned gray. He looked 
at Boyle with a quick, puzzled gasp: 

“Only—why you can’t really think I’m—that I’m 
guilty?” 

It was an abrupt climax, but before Boyle could 
answer, the office door was thrust open. There 
stood Miss Greene, tight lipped, yet evidently almost 
bursting with new$. Long training made her look 
only to her employer for permission to speak. 

The male trio scowled at her intrusion. Farley’s 
nerves were on edge. 

“Well?” he asked sharply. 

“There are three men outside, with three plain¬ 
clothes men besides. They say—that is, one of them 
says he must see you at once. It’s a Mr. Hoag- 
land-•” 

“Hoagland!” shouted the chief of the secret 
service. “Bring him in!” 

“What is it?” gasped Farley. He began to mop 
his brow. 


THE BUENOS AIRES WOMAN 297 

Boyle made a sapient gesture that meant “Wait 
and see.” He had no idea what was coming. 

The guards did not enter, but Hoagland, smiling 
profusely, bustled forward at once, his derby hat 
in one hand. Behind him followed a sturdy, boyish 
person with frank eyes and a shock of tow-colored 
hair, and behind him —and quite as if he were glad 
to accompany them—a broad, big, genial gentleman, 
carrying a Malacca cane strapped to one wrist, a 
gentleman immaculately clad in speckless white, 
whose dark glances flashed from the now incar¬ 
nadined Miss Greene to the group about the desk, 
and whose fat hands were lavishly decked with 
rings. 

“Well?” snapped Boyle, who had no intention of 
betraying any lack of omniscience. “Let’s hear 
what you’ve got to say, Mr. Hoagland.” 

Hoagland did not at once directly answer his 
chief. He had his own pride and his own love for 
the dramatic. Not to be robbed of their indulgence, 
he had carefully refrained from telegraphing any 
news in advance. He pushed forward the younger 


298 


MONEY TO BURN 


of his two companions and addressed the general 
assemblage. 

“This is Doctor Daniel Gurney Stone,” said he, 
“or almost a doctor,” he corrected. “He’s proved 
himself of invaluable assistance to us, and this ”— 
he pointed to the smiling foreigner—“is Senor Ra¬ 
mon Villeta—according to himself—and he can give 
you some information about those Fillmore plates.” 

Don Ramon made a sweeping bow. 

Farley leaned forward and looked at the recent 
planter with puzzled interest. 

“I’ve seen you before, but I can’t think-” 

Then he remembered. 

Boyle was entirely what he would have called 
“practical.” Quite as if he had never had the least 
suspicion of Farley, he now addressed Hoagland. 
“Have you got the plates?” 

“Sure.” The agent handed out a carefully 
wrapped package. “You know what an altar stone 
is, chief? I traced these to an altar stone.” 

“Of course you did,” said Boyle 

But his assertion lost all its potential effectiveness 
in the common rush to examine that offered package. 


THE BUENOS AIRES WOMAN 


299 


There arose a general sigh. Each in his own way, 
the Washington officials certified the contents of that 
parcel to be what they had just been pronounced. 

The secretary of the treasury cleared his throat. 
He pulled at his whiskers and opened his mouth. 
He was patently glad, however, that Hoagland post¬ 
poned for him the immediate necessity to apologize 
to Farley. 

“Remember Tucker?” Hoagland inquired of Boyle. 
“Skinny, lanky guy—government engraver with a 
chronic grouch?” 

The head of the secret service nodded noncom- 
mitally. It was Farley who gave eager assent, and 
to him, as the more appreciative, Hoagland then ad¬ 
dressed himself: 

“Extra disgruntled. He resigned about six 
months ago. Fve a hunch my friend, Sehor Villeta, 
had something to do with it. Well, as the chief 
here knows, I’d had Lawson and Sweeney and my¬ 
self following paper, mostly around Brooklyn 
wharves, and that’s how I struck the lead. The 
counterfeiters’ mistake was in wanting to overdo the 
thing, like that Pennsylvania case, where the fel- 


300 


MONEY TO BURN 


lows got away with their bills, but were caught 
by their cigar stamps. This gang ran short of 
paper and sent up for more.” 

“Yes—yes,” said Farley. “And you followed that 
clew?” 

“Went to Santo Domingo with the fresh supply, 
and there I found this Tucker had been making hay 
while the sun shone on Senor Villeta’s ranch—or 
while it didn’t! Night work, you know. I ran into 
a lively mess, I can tell you, but Doc Stone helped 
me out. Still, that’s a long story, and Tucker’s dead 
now-” 

“And so you got these plates?” 

“Yep, and cabled our consul to have the captain 
and mate of the ship the gang used held for further 
orders at Port of Spain, where I knew they had 
condensed milk to deliver. Then I came back. It 
was a side partner of Tucker’s shipped the paper; 
I gathered him in as I came through N’York this 
morning, but he doesn’t know much, so I left him 
locked up downtown, here in Washington, and-” 

“Did you get any of their product?” 

“The phony money?” Hoagland’s face fell. “Just 




THE BUENOS AIRES WOMAN 


301 


this.” He produced a few charred hills. “All the 
rest was burned up in the chapel where they stored 
it. Money to burn Villeta had—and he burned it, 
all right l” 

Then, for the first time during this interview, Dan 
Stone spoke. Out of a trousers pocket, he pulled 
his ten bills. 

“I’ve got this, sir. I was paid it for—well, for 
semiprofessional medical services.” 

He placed his thousand dollars on the desk. 
Boyle, however, had succeeded in securing attention 
by turning upon the Santo Domingan. 

“I came across you just nine years ago, my 
friend,” he was saying; he had the good detective’s 
memory for faces. “It was a little matter of opium 
smuggling then, but we couldn’t get the goods on 
you. We suspected your wife, too. Where’s she 
now?” 

Don Ramon shrugged lightly. “My new wife, 
you mean, the wife I married two—three years ago 
—yes? Oh, she is in no way concerned in the pres¬ 
ent enterprise. She is living in Buenos Aires.” 

There came a loud gasp from the door. Every 


302 


MONEY TO BURN 


one stared thither. Miss Cecilia Greene, whose con¬ 
tinued attendance had been overlooked by Villeta, 
crouched there in a state closely verging on collapse. 
Nevertheless, even as they all stared, she was pull¬ 
ing her statuesque frame together and already 
pointing a finger at the foreigner. 

“You—you-she exclaimed. 

On her invitation, Mr. Farley had once, it will be 
recalled, dined at his stenographer’s boarding house. 
In those days he considered it good business to be 
on terms of personal acquaintance with his office 
force; and in those days he regarded this one of its 
members rather as a fellow government clerk than 
as a woman. Now he colored slightly as he duti¬ 
fully inquired: 

“Miss Greene, isn’t this Senor Villeta a gentleman 
who used to live where you do?” 

She covered her face with those pathetic hands 
for ten years so efficient in the bureau’s service. 

“I—I thought that he and I were going to get 
married!” she blurted. “He made love so—so won¬ 
derfully! Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Farley!” 

Farley bowed his head. “Go on,” said he. 



THE BUENOS AIRES WOMAN 


303 


“Well, then, I’d refused a lot of other men, be¬ 
cause I thought you were going to promote me, 
and at last it was plain you wouldn’t.” She low¬ 
ered her hands and raised her eyes to Farley’s with 
sudden defiance, but as quickly looked away. 
“When I found I was mistaken, I—I—I guess I 
was a fool. Anyhow, that’s why I borrowed them 
for him.” 

All but two of the men regarded the handsome 
penitent with a mixture of bewilderment and com¬ 
passion. 

“Explain yourself!” Boyle ordered. 

Quick to attempt to retrieve his error, Don Ra¬ 
mon turned to her. “But, my dear Miss Cecilia, I 
am assuredly going to marry you!” 

He was too late. 

“You—you beast!” she cried. She triumphed. 
“What about the wife in Buenos Aires?” 

She gave him a wholly withering scorn. Boyle 
had stepped over to her. He grasped her arm as in 
a vise. 

“How did you do it?” he bellowed in her ear. 


304 MONEY TO BURN 

“Don’t hold me like that!” She shook him off. 
“And don’t yell. It’s rude.” 

“Well?” he demanded, but he let go his hold and 
lowered his voice. 

“Mr. Farley,” said Miss Greene, ignoring the se¬ 
cret-service chief and, for some occult reason, facing 
Dan as the least unsympathetic man in view, “Mr. 
Farley had made up the fresh combination of the 
safe on December 30th. I knew he would—I’ve 
not been here for years for nothing!—and I believed 
Don Ramon—I mean, this creature—when he said 
he just wanted a glimpse at them.” 

“At what?” asked Boyle. “The plates?” 

“Of course, silly! Because he said he was going 
to be head of the Santo Domingan treasury depart¬ 
ment and wanted some ideas about plate making, 
only America was sort of in control of the island 
and wouldn’t let him do anything. Oh,” she broke 
off, “I know I was a fool to believe him, and I knew 
then it was dreadfully wicked, but I thought Mr. 
Farley-” 

That one interrupted. He still spoke as a man 
determined to perform a painful duty: 


THE BUENOS AIRES WOMAN 


305 


“I remember,” he explained to the company, “that 
Miss Greene was—er—very much annoyed about not 
getting Dodd’s position. Nevertheless, I must add 
that I did not speak the combination aloud, and no 
one—not even she—saw the paper on which I 
wrote it.” 

The stenographer looked at him with sad eyes, 
but she went on: “Not exactly, Mr. Farley; only, 
when you worked it out, you did write it down in 
ink and you blotted the paper on your desk blotter. 
I was watching and I know. While you were out 
of the room giving Mr. Dodd and Mr. Lemmell their 
halves of it, I read the blotted numbers by simply 
copying them exactly on a sheet of tracing paper 
and holding that to the light. When we were clos¬ 
ing up, I brought some unnecessary papers into the 
vault, straight past Jenkins, the guard. Oh, I often 
had to do that, and he never looked into the room— 
why should he?—he always looked out —that was 
the way any burglar had to come from! Well, I 
just opened the safe quickly, stuffed the unnecessary 
papers under my dress, so he’d see they were gone 
if he had sense enough to think about them at all— 


306 


MONEY TO BURN 


and stuffed the plates there, too, of course—and 
then I went directly to the ladies’ dressing room.” 

“And then?” It was Boyle who spoke now. He 
waved down Farley’s hand that was raised in pro¬ 
test against harshness. “And then?” 

She glared at him. “In there I pinned on my 
hat and powdered my nose, but first I wrapped 
the plates in oilcloth.” She pointed to Ramon. 
“He’d provided it.” 

“Where did you hide them?” 

“Where he told me to; in the box up top that 
holds the water.” 

“But,” protested Farley, still loyal to his system, 
“every employee is searched on leaving!” 

“Yes, sir. Only that was a day before a holi¬ 
day. I was searched as usual. I said I’d forgotten 
my bag—must have left it in the dressing room— 
which I’d done, too, on purpose—so I ran up and 
stuffed the plates again under my dress and just 
ran back and opened my bag for the inspector to 
show him nothing was in it that shouldn’t be. He 
was in as much of a hurry as I was. Then—then 


THE BUENOS AIRES WOMAN 307 

I went to the matinee and gave this—this Don 
Ramon the plates!” 

“And what did you do next?” Boyle kept the in¬ 
quisitorial preeminence that he had acquired with 
so much difficulty. 

“Why, next,” pursued Miss Greene, now only too 
ready to convict both herself and her false ad¬ 
mirer, “next, he gave them back, the way he’d 
promised to, on the Tuesday morning when I stopped 
at the boarding house after being at my sister’s 
in Alexandria. I’d been near crazy all the time they 
were gone, Mr. Farley. And he”—the memory was 
almost too much for her—“he thanked me and said 
I’d helped a poor, oppressed government and 
wouldn’t ever have cause to regret it.” 

She paused only to dab her eyes with a crumpled 
handkerchief. She launched defiance at her quon¬ 
dam lover. 

“And so,” she continued, “after the plates were 
missed on Tuesday morning—we weren’t searched 
when we came in, you know—I reached over your 
head, Mr. Farley, as if / was looking for them, too, 
and put them on the wrong shelf and found 


308 


MONEY TO BURN 


them there. Nobody’d ever suspect me,” she said 
bitterly to Boyle; “but I guess this—this beast 
copied them while he had them. Only, I give you 
my word, I never dreamed he’d lied—not till months 
afterward.” She turned on the fat Lothario. 
“You’re a crook,” she said to Don Ramon, “a crook! 
And I want you to know that, since I found you out, 
I’ve—I’ve become engaged to an honest man—I’ve 
become engaged to Mr. Farley.” 

The very room gasped its surprise. Everybody 
turned to the superintendent. 

“Ahem!” coughed the thus announced fiance. 

“Eh?” asked the secretary of the treasury. 

“It’s quite true,” admitted Farley, with a sudden 
blushing recrudescence of youth. “Of course, I 
didn’t know till now-” 

“Will it make any difference between us?” de¬ 
manded Cecilia Greene. There was a certain large¬ 
ness about her gesture, though her eyes were moist, 
“because if it does, you’re free.” 

She was really very handsome, and she had 
been at last undeniably truthful. Farley looked at 
her. 



THE BUENOS AIRES WOMAN 


309 


“It won’t,” said he, and then challenged criticism 
from everybody. 

None was forthcoming. Boyle had walked back 
to the desk and was examining the plates that his 
agent had brought. 

“Villeta,” said he, “we’ve got to hand it to you 
for one thing. These are just about flawless. I 
congratulate you on being the most expert counter¬ 
feiter the service has ever come across.” 

Don Ramon, now that Farley’s stenographer had 
done her worst against him, was his best self once 
more. He bowed a deprecating acknowledgment to 
Boyle. Then, with an inclination of apology to Miss 
Greene, he calmly usurped her place in the lime¬ 
light. He coughed softly behind a fat hand with 
outspread, ringed fingers, and, having thus secured 
the desired attention, said: 

“Gentlemen, I am about to denounce the guilty 
man—and to prove— prove —that I am not he, that 
he is a member of the cabinet of the President of 


your United States.” 


CHAPTER XXYI 


GUILTY UNCLE SAM 

OROBABLY not since the denunciation of Aaron 
^ Burr had such a charge been made in Wash¬ 
ington. Villeta was not mad; he patently knew the 
full weight of his words, and yet he as patently en¬ 
joyed them. Uninvited, he sat down. He crossed 
his plump legs, tapped one of them with his Malacca 
cane, and beamed on his gaping audience. 

Boyle swore. In a paroxysm of stupefaction, 
Hoagland grinned frozenly. For Farley this new 
surprise was one too many; he sought Cecilia’s sup¬ 
port, while Dan joined the others in looking from 
the cheerful face of Don Ramon to the dumfounded 
countenance of the secretary and back again. Since 
nobody else appeared able to speak, the Domingan 
embraced the opportunity that he had created. 

“As you gentlemen will shortly discover,” said 
he, “this affair—at least as far as I am concerned— 
is all but concluded. Therefore, I may speak as I 


GUILTY UNCLE SAM 


311 


always prefer to speak—frankly. I do not conceal 
from you that it was my hope—if the initial venture 
succeeded and if, of course”—he inclined his great 
head to the gasping Cecilia—“and if, of course, 
my suit for this fair lady’s hand was favored—to 
borrow, as time passed, other plates by means of 
her good will and efficient services. Nevertheless, 
Senor Secret Service Chief, my inherent honesty 
compels me to confess that I do not completely de¬ 
serve your praise-” 

His auditors were gradually emerging from their 
paralysis. Hoagland, recovering an instant before 
his immediate superior, seized the opportunity thus 
provided. 

“Cut it out! Cut out the society stuff!” he inter¬ 
rupted. “Chief,” said he to Boyle, “this guy never 
had one lone good quality except that he was decent 
to Pedro—and Pedro was a bird.” 

Boyle decided upon nonchalance. He sought to 
cover wide wonder with a narrow smile. “Well, 
why shouldn’t Senor Villeta be good to a bird? He’s 
some bird himself!” 

Don Ramon was not, however, to be distracted by 



312 


MONEY TO BURN 


persiflage. He went on: “I was saying, Senor Chief, 
that I do not completely deserve your generous en¬ 
comium, and this is why. Attend now: Except for 
one bill here that—then without my knowledge— 
Senor Tucker had given to a temporarily embar¬ 
rassed senor engaged by a house of paper makers 
of bank-note paper makers, to be exact—I have not 
yet put one of my notes upon the market.” 

“What?” At least three voices shouted the un¬ 
believing query. 

“But no,” softly laughed Villeta, extending an 
open palm. “You must understand, my dear sirs, 
that when one what you call ‘unloads’ in such af¬ 
fairs as this, the unloading must be all at once, be¬ 
fore governmental alarm is taken. Myself, I wished 
to print an even two million dollars before I started 
to sell my wares. I was consistent, and save for the 
few charred fragments that Senor Hoagland has 
brought here, and that one unfortunately given the 
paper maker, the only existing copies of notes I have 
printed are now on that desk there. I paid them 
to this senor doctor to quiet him and because I 
hoped him soon to disappear.” 


GUILTY UNCLE SAM 


313 


Don Ramon paused. He raised a dramatic arm. 

“Gentlemen,” he smilingly declared, “you have 
grievously wronged me. It is not / who have been 
the counterfeit. / used real paper and real plates— 
your paper and the plates that you had made. And 
you never thought to examine what you found, at 
last, in your own possession!” 

There followed a silence scarcely less surprised 
than its predecessor. Don Ramon was radiant. 
Dan could not quite suppress a merely nervous 
chuckle, but everybody else was solemnly astounded. 
Then Farley pressed a finger to the bell designed 
to summon his senior assistant—and forgot to re¬ 
move the pressure. 

“Bring me,” said he, as Lemmell put his fussy 
little head into the crowded room, “the Fillmore 
hundred-dollar-note plates—and the standard note 
along with them.” 

“Oh, you will see!” Don Ramon bit his ragged 
nails while they waited; but he ceased on Lem- 
mell’s return and began to rub his hands again in 
premonitory satisfaction. 


314 


MONEY TO BURN 


Then, as he watched his contention indubitably 
verified, he shot his full holt. 

“The plates that were half innocently substituted 
by my poor, dear Miss Ceclilia Greene here-” 

“I hate you!” cried Cecilia. “And I wouldn’t 
knowingly have got Mr. Farley in any trouble for 
anything!” 

Farley daringly reached over and patted her supple 
shoulders. 

“Were,” continued the unruffled Villeta, “not those 
which she had given to me. Not at all. What I 
gave her and what she then gave you were my own 
counterfeit plates, carefully but quickly copied from 
the originals—while those originals were in my pos¬ 
session—by your Senor Josiah Tucker, God rest his 
soul! Senor Secretary of the Treasury, you have 
been flooding your own country with bogus money!” 

They came running toward him—all of them— 
their mouths agape. But he did not budge. 

“And,” he serenely concluded, “unless you wish 
to expose your own foolishness by publishing this 
confession, you will find no charge on which you 
can legally hold me.” 



GUILTY UNCLE SAM 31$ 

He had the whip hand. It was Hoagland that 
struck it down. 

“Well, / charge you,” said he, “with the murder 
of two of your own servants—two of your peons— 
fellows that you caught investigating your haci¬ 
enda’s chapel. Stone tells me they died before I got 
there—these fwo—but once you’re locked up, we’ll 
find some of your people willing enough to talk, and 
if I’ve learned anything about Santo Domingo” 
he looked at Boyle, who nodded a wise assent—“the 
courts down there, where of course you’ll be tried, 
won’t stand for the introduction ol any impertinent 
evidence about matters up here in Washington. 

The effect of that speech on the great criminal 
and the high government officials that it more or less 
directly involved was manifold. Quite ten minutes 
had elapsed before so unimportant a person as 
Daniel Gurney Stone, M. D.-minus, had a chance to 
act in repercussion to its effect on him. Then he 
managed, after several failures, to drag Hoagland 
privately into a corner. 

“Look here,” he whispered. “As far as I can 
make things out, the secretary’s letting everybody. 


316 


MONEY TO BURN 


except old Ramon, down easy, because there’s an 
election due and he doesn’t want publicity. He’s 
even going to turn free that good-looking stenog¬ 
rapher so she can marry her boss, and he’ll prob¬ 
ably give her a wedding present, by the looks of 
him. Why, he’s promised me enough out of his 
own pocket to—well, he’s whispered that I may 
keep the thousand Villeta paid me and apply it to 
my medical tuition fees. But what I want to ask 
you is this: You sounded a little while ago as if you 
knew something about Santo Domingan law. Can 
you inform me as to a good lawyer in San Domingo 
City, or Puerto Plata, who’ll get back my fiancee’s 
estate for her?” 

THE END. 


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Was the mysterious new hand a fugitive from justice? Gordon 
Hughes, who prided himself on his good judgment, said “No.” Some 
rapid action proves that he was not far from right. Price, $2.00 net 

THE RANCH OF THE THORN 

by William H. Hamby 

After buying a ranch in Mexico, "Neal Ashton discovered that seven 
previous owners had disappeared. How Neal escaped the fate of the 
seven makes a thrilling adventure and mystery tale. 

Price, $2.00 net 

BEHIND LOCKED DOORS 

by Ernest M. Poate 

Detective-story fans will welcome the advent of a new book by 
Doctor Poate. This one introduces a thrilling figure in the person 
of Doctor Bentiron, superdetective. Price, $2.00 net 

MILLIONS IN MOTORS 

by William West Winter 

In realizing his ambitions, Joe Lynch lost all sense of proportion; 
he worshiped power and wealth. He found, however, that they are 
worthless without character to guide their use. Price, $2.00 net 

LOUISIANA LOU by William West Winter 

Can a man begin a new life at forty? This question is answered 
in masterly style in this lively and entertaining study of Western 
character and psychology. Price, $1.75 net 


CHELSEA 

79~89 Seventh Ore. 



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